Prof Ehrman’s new book ** you do not have permission to see this link **, has just been published. I look forward to reading it very much especially since I am almost automatically skeptical of such claims. Of course Christianity as a body of thought is not one thing but a range of things, from the most benign to the most malignant. In celebration of the new book I want to point out that Christianity is responsible for spreading some Really Bad Ideas, and here I wish to discuss what I think some of those are.
Original Sin
I realize that under the expression “Original Sin” lurks a whole menagerie of historical theological interpretations but I am not interested in arguing for one flavor over another. I want to examine the underlying assumptions that lurk underneath all of them, whatever their valence. Namely…
There is something “wrong” with reality that needs to be fixed.
We live in a Fallen World that needs to be redeemed.
We are guilty of something by simply being born.
Our ancestors, even those not quite human yet, lived in a world in which almost everything was more powerful than they were. It is easy to see where they might imagine that the struggle for life to survive everyday might have been caused by some primordial catastrophe. They imagined some lost paradise where life was easy. Behind this fantasy was the idea that humans occupied some special place in creation and if that did not seem to be the case now, must have once been so, and one day would be so again.
Eden, Atlantis, Paradise, Heaven. Who has not felt this longing? Especially when our dreams are dashed, or we mourn the death of love, or bury a loved one? It shouldn’t be like this! Something’s wrong!
But we are not the goal of evolution. The universe exists not for our benefit. We are a byproduct of the processes of nature. Suffering is inherent in existence. We didn’t so anything wrong. We’re not guilty. There is no salvation because there is no need for salvation. But this is not a counsel of despair. We evolved as a social species. We flourish together or not at all. We’re pattern seeking and pattern creating primates. We make meaning. We created compassion out of pity for ourselves and each other. The most fundamental, existential insight is that we all share the same fate.
To take all that we are and to project it out of ourselves onto some Big Primate in the Sky is to betray ourselves.
Is it possible to comprehend the damage that this pernicious, evil idea of “sin” and damnation and guilt has done to our psyches? How it has put us at war with our natural desires? How it has divided us from nature – and each other?
It is past time for all that to be over.
I think you are spot on. One thing I will add is how tenacious the idea is–once you accept it.
The idea that I am guilty and need a savior was hard break away from. And it interested me to observe that in my conversations with certain trusted intellectual friends trying to sure up my faith as I lost it, they all brought up variations on that argument: You need a savior, if it’s not Christ then who could it be?
But I agree that it is a pernicious idea. I have likened it in the past to an abusive boyfriend who psychologically traps a woman in the relationship by breaking her down: You are disgusting and don’t deserve love; I’m the only one who will ever love you.
I think the Christian beliefs may be wrong and harmful, but they accurately describe how many people act.
I hate how the Spanish decimated the people they came into contact with 1492 onward, but to be fair many of the things the indigenous are described as doing to one another were horrible. They managed to come up with horrors sans Christian teaching.
The relentless horror of the conquistador fostered by the inbred Catholic rulers led to Bart de Las Casas being able to articulate human rights of some kind something that may never have happened without a certain Christian perspective.
“led to Bart de Las Casas being able to articulate human rights of some kind something that may never have happened without a certain Christian perspective”
“Without a certain Christian perspective,” would the British empire have ever outlawed slavery?
Alvin J. Schmidt, _How Christianity Changed the World_ (2004)
The relentless horror of the conquistador fostered by the inbred Catholic rulers led to Bart de Las Casas being able to articulate human rights of some kind something that may never have happened without a certain Christian perspective.
“Without a certain Christian perspective,” would the British empire have ever outlawed slavery?
Have either of you ever wondered why Christians didn’t immediately abolish slavery the moment they assumed power over the Roman Empire? Sure they figured it out – 1700 years after Christ. And also after the secular Enlightenment codification of the concept of human rights. (And in Christian America after a long and bloody Civil War.) Meanwhile in Second Century Buddhist India, after the conversion of Emperor Ashoka, the slave trade was suppressed at sword point.
Have you considered the possibility that it was the Christian view of the Fallen world and sin that might have delayed such insights in the West?
“Christians… figured it out – 1700 years after Christ”
Aristotle had little influence over Christian thinkers during late antiquity; he was known to them, but they tended to be more influenced by Plato or the Stoics than the Peripatetics.
Once the empire fell, aside from some works of logic, Aristotle was unknown to the Latin west until the 12th and 13th centuries. Even then, there was a process of his being adopted widely.
Meanwhile in the East, Aristotle was known,but not regarded as an authority. He really only developed that influence in western scholasticism.
Christianity came to control the Roman empire in the 4th century.
The delay that Stephen asks about was there long before Aristotle was taken as an authority by Christian authors.
“Without a certain Christian perspective,” would suttee have ever been outlawed?
“in Second Century Buddhist India, after the conversion of Emperor Ashoka, the slave trade was suppressed at sword point”
Did he ban slavery?
[Grok]”British evangelicals like William Wilberforce (1759–1833), inspired by his faith, led Parliament to abolish the slave trade (1807) and slavery in the British Empire (1833)”
Aristotle had little influence over Christian thinkers during late antiquity; he was known to them, but they tended to be more influenced by Plato or the Stoics than the Peripatetics.
And of Plato’s work the only widely available text was the Timaeus.
It seems necessary to reiterate my point. If we’re going to credit Christianity with being the cultural conduit for good ideas entering the consciousness of the West, then it should own up to the bad ideas as well. I doubt Prof Ehrman would disagree.
What we should avoid are the partisan extremes of saying Christianity was either totally pure or totally corrupt. It was like any other system of human thought. It’s the folks who claim some unique divine inspiration who have some ‘splaining to do. Ideas of compassion and empathy were not unique to the West. As Porphyry and I have pointed out, In some ways the West lagged behind.
And of Plato’s work the only widely available text was the Timaeus.
Indeed. There was a fairly rapid collapse of usable Greek among the Latin upper-class near the end of the Roman empire. It reminds me of the way usable knowledge of Latin was extinguished almost overnight in the Catholic Church, leaving centuries of scholarship untranslated and accessible only to a (relatively) small group of specialists.
One wonders how intellectual history might have been different had Boethius lived to finish his translations, or if Cassiodorus’s efforts had born more fruit, or if Jerome had not had such single-minded interest in Scripture and religious disdain for philosophy.
It is also interesting to note how much of the preservation of the Greek philosophers the West owes to the Muslims.
Yes. I don’t want to be too absolute. Aquinas could expound on the meaning of Greek terms–but that doesn’t mean he could undertake a translation of the Metaphysics, let alone read it with fluency. Eriugena knew Greek.
But (as today with Latin), having a small class of specialists in a language who have genuine facility in a language is not the same as having the people who study the subject discussed in a text (say medieval and renaissance philosophy) able to access that text without considerable time and effort and error.
The bishops at Vatican II debated in Latin. JPII wrote his dissertation in Latin. In the 50s even a not-so-bright Jesuit seminarian was expected to be able to carry on daily conversation in a sort of pidgin Latin. Today, the Vatican has trouble finding enough Latinists to translate official documents.
The situation would have been even worse when texts had to be copied by hand. If no one in a scriptorium could even identify a text, let alone understand it, what are the odds of it getting preserved?
Eriugena was one of my apophatic heroes
I rather suspected that was who you had in mind when you spoke of insular scholars knowing Greek in the dark ages. Scholars of the British isles were not generally known for their linguistic skill (in fact, their manuscripts are notorious for having childish spelling errors, although the region did, still, produce some outstanding scholars over the period).
It is also interesting to note how much of the preservation of the Greek philosophers the West owes to the Muslims.
The story of Islam is a great tragedy. When the remnants of classical civilization were pushed eastwards by Christians there began a flourishing of art, science and culture that lasted for centuries while Europe slept. But in the 13th century the reactionaries and fundamentalists took over and Islam began its own Dark Age. A development from which it has never truly recovered.
Let me recommend one of the most absorbing yet saddest historical studies I’ve ever read.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
The story of Islam is a great tragedy. When the remnants of classical civilization were pushed eastwards by Christians there began a flourishing of art, science and culture that lasted for centuries
There certainly was a lot to admire in the Islamic Golden Age. It is indeed a tragedy that the fundamentalists won their internecine wars for the soul of the movement.
“ever wondered why Christians didn’t immediately abolish slavery the moment they assumed power over the Roman Empire?”
One could also wonder how come the world hasn’t become Christian multiple times over.
Karl Falken, _The Ultimate Question: A Revelation by a Servant of the King_ (2023, large print edition), 193pp., on 69-70 in Chapter 9, Face-to-Face with Christ
** you do not have permission to see this link **
…Christ… showed me that through obedience to God, anything is possible within God’s will.
One point I will always remember with surprise and shame was that the Church could have won the entire world for Christ in any generation, from the time of the apostles to our present age.
Only laziness, selfishness, timidity, and unbelief (and mainly the latter) have held back the Church.
Somehow that sort of if-only reasoning isn’t very convincing: We could have convinced everyone if only we hadn’t been such consistently miserable people.
If we are measuring the actual contribution of Christianity to the world, this seems to speak rather poorly to its record.
It reminds me of Belloc’s appeal to the Church’s survival in spite of its being conducted with knavish imbecility to prove its divine origin. In what world does knavish imbecility get transmuted into proof of divine origin? (Evidently alchemy is very much alive and well.)
Also, it raises the formidable problem of divine hiddenness. Why would an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God allow a truth he wants the world to know to be obscured by miserable messengers.
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