Creationism vs. Evolution. Heliocentric vs. geocentric solar system. We are all familiar with the conflicts between scientific and faith-based thinking. Many historians, including Edward Gibbon, largely blame the rise of Christianity for the decline of reason as the Classical world became the Medieval world in Europe. So this is not a new concept. But it is an idea explored in great depth in the book The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman. Subtitled “The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason,” Freeman traces first the origins of reason-based thought in Greek philosophy, and then the rise of Christianity in all its sordid details. Freeman’s analysis of the rise of Greek philosophy is fairly cursory and simplified, but in it he traces not only the rise of scientific thought as we might know it through the Aristotelian tradition, and sets up for the rise of faith-based thinking ironically through the Platonic tradition. The former centered on empirical observation as the basis of knowledge in a manner that is very similar to the modern scientific method. By contrast Platonism places “pure reason” at its center and rejects empirical observation as a basis for knowledge. Although Platonism sought to be a purer form of reason, Freeman argues that by putting the human mind over empiricism, and by establishing the belief that only a very few elite thinkers are qualified to tell everyone else what is true and what isn’t, Plato essentially provided early Christianity with the tools it would need to supplant reason with faith and learned argument where no one is an unquestioned authority with the idea that a hierarchy of elite thinkers can dictate truth.

The book’s strength is its detailed description of the rise of Christian orthodoxy (with a small “o”) in what became the Catholic Church in the West and the Greek Orthodox (big “O”) Church in the East. Most believers in a particular flavor of their chosen religion know about it as an already established authority with a solid belief in eternal truths. But of course no religious sect ever appeared fully formed and Christian orthodoxy in particular, in both its Latin and Greek branches, developed in a very circuitous and strange way. It is that circuitous and strange path from the teachings of a small group of Jewish thinkers (Jesus and his disciples) to an authoritarian organization that in the Middle Ages was the dominant force in society makes for some interesting reading.

Freeman tries to piece together from what little data there is what Jesus and his teachings really would have been. Much of this can be summed up in Jesus’ own words that he comes not to replace The Law (the Torah), but to complete it. Jesus was a religious reformer within Judaism and his immediate followers thought within that structure. There is no evidence that Jesus himself presented himself as divine in any way and the concept of the Trinity was not a part of the earliest phases of Christianity. Early Christianity was a small sect of Judaism. This is not surprising in and of itself, but what might be surprising to some is how all of the doctrines that define Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity largely evolved later and were essentially rejections of the earliest Christian ideas. What became orthodox doctrine of both Latin and Greek churches would have been unfamiliar to Jesus himself. The process is summed up by Christian theologian Augustine’s own words that he would not believe anything in the scriptures unless told to believe by the Church hierarchy. This is a reversal of Jewish thinking where the Torah is what is dominant and all the squabbling interpretations of it by religious authorities are interesting and important, but at root merely the squabbling of people. The Torah remains the authority behind everything.

Anyone who is not familiar with the torturous evolution of Christianity, wherein people killed each other over a single letter “i” (one iota) should read this book for its summary of this evolution. The establishment of the belief that Jesus and God are of the same substance (homoousios in Greek) rather than of similar substance (homoiousios) took a very long time to become accepted dogma and came from some rather strange compromises and debates and ultimately is due to one man’s whim. Emperor Constantine declared that that one iota was to be left out and homoousios should be the dogma and he forced a bewildered clergy to sign on. This doctrine was actively ignored until another Emperor reiterated the order. And this became the doctrine of the Church and anyone who added that little iota could be excommunicated and/or killed by law. This is how Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity developed. In the process, since scripture could be used more easily to support homoiousios over homoousios, the developing Chruch hierarchy rewrote or reinterpreted scripture to fit homoouios…or simply, like Augustine, rejected scriptures as being authoritative placing the church hierarchy above scripture. In the process some very interesting earlier writers had to be rejected because their analysis of the scriptures stuck closer to the original.

Early on WITHIN Christianity there was a divide as to how to view reason. Starting with Paul’s letters (actually the part of the New Testament that was written down earliest) there is an active rejection of reason. In fact, Paul’s letters rapidly became more authoritative than the Gospels (of which there originally were more than a dozen, giving more than a dozen views of Jesus’ actual teachings). Paul began the split with Judaism, began the rejection of reason, and began the view that sex was inherently evil, something that Judaism and Jesus himself, as a Jew, would never have accepted. Since one of God’s first commandments was be fruitful and multiply, Judaism sees sex within marriage as a mitzvah, a good deed. Paul and several other early Christian writers were profoundly afraid of sex and women and their fears became Church dogma. Paul’s influence is so profound that I have heard some refer to the religion not as Christianity so much as Paulism.

After Paul, another man afraid of sex and with a particularly nasty temper is dominant in shaping Chruch dogma: Athanasius, It is through his tireless and often violent methods that homoousios came to dominate. But he almost lost to Arius, the primary advocate of a version of homoiousios. Today it is hard to imagine the crude, nasty, brutish methods that went into this fight over whether Jesus and God were of identical or similar substance. But in the process both reason and scripture suffered while the concept of a Church authority, whether bishops (and eventually Papal authority) in the Latin West or the Emperor in the Greek East, became accepted. And remember that it is through these crude, nasty, brutish fights that could often erupt into riots that we get the modern Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Some of what was lost in the infighting was the ideas of some theologians who used scripture and Platonic reasoning in their theology. As an outsider I find some of these now heretical works to sometimes be more appealing and more reasonable than what became dogma. The history of the mixing of Platonism with Christianity (and even with Judaism) is in itself fascinating and an interesting part of Freeman’s book. But ultimately most of the products of this mixing were declared heretical and faith in Church authority replaced even faith in reason…with Aristotelian empiricism a distant third place loser. One heretical concept that seems more appealing than the ultimate dogma was the idea of early Christian theologian Origen. Origen, using a Platonic approach and relying on scriptures, argued that there was no place for eternal damnation in Christianity and that ultimately the perfection of God MUST win out completely. This meant that ultimately ALL souls would be saved…including Satan’s. One can imagine a kinder, gentler church had Origen’s ideas won out. But the Church hierarchy WANTED a concept of eternal damnation as a weapon to use against dissenters. I should note that Buddhism essentially believes that all souls will eventually reach perfection, and although Buddhists have had their share of nasty infighting, in general I think this idea that there is no eternal damnation and that given time all will be saved has made it a more peaceful and mellow religion.

So I recommend The Closing of the Western Mind by Charles Freeman both as a source for those interested in the historical transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages as well as for anyone who wants to learn more about the evolution of Christian doctrine from a source that is not biased towards one particular Christian authority.

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