• Summary
• Full Review
• Table of Contents
• Our Rating of this book

Summary

Recommended

Book Description:
"Extravagant charges have lately been laid, or in some cases relaid, at Christianity's door...The problem with these condemnations is, of course, that they are all false, as Carroll and Shiflett demonstrate by restating the historical record and core Christian teachings and by putting specific events, such as the Crusades, and practices, such as slavery, in historical and cross-cultural perspective."

To whom do we attribute the accomplishments of Western Civilization? For several decades, the view among post-modern intellectual elites and their followers in the general culture have considered this a question that shouldn't even be asked. In their minds, the "achievements" of the West have been the oppression and impoverishment of people of color (who were all peaceful egalitarian folk, of course), along with environmental destruction. And often these charges are laid at the door of Christianity, with its alleged intolerance, racism, and sexism.

Carroll and Shiflett's book is the perfect antidote to these charges. The authors demonstrate that despotic tyranny, slavery, racism, and environmental destruction have been practiced all around the world for most of history. Only in the West, however, did humanity begin to rise up against these behaviors. And it was Christians, and often only Christians, that led the charge against them. They describe the commonest, broad charges against Christianity and turn them back on critics. In the process they document some of the intemperance that passes for journalism, and the peculiar ignorance of history found in the works of critics.

If the writings of sociopolitical pundits, essayists and commentators are any indication, it has been my observation that since September 11th, the post-modern paradigm is beginning to crack. On that day, the Western world was reminded that large parts of the globe have not risen above barbarism and tyranny. There seems to be a renewed realization that what West has achieved in terms of egalitarianism, human rights, technological advancement, and freedom is, in fact, quite remarkable and unique.

So, that brings us back to the original question; to whom do we attribute the accomplishments of Western Civilization? The standard line of modernist secularists is that it was the Enlightenment skeptics who broke the shackles of Christianity's dark age thinking, and brought about scientific discovery and the equality of all people.

But the authors show that this cannot be maintained. The Roman world and the rest of pagan Europe knew nothing of universal equality. It was introduced to Rome by the Apostle Paul, who declared that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female". So, when in 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he could write words such as "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" and, as the authors put it, "expect his readers not to laugh out loud" (as they would have been in most places and times). Christian presuppositions by Wilberforce led to the downfall of slavery, among them that the Dominion Mandate of Genesis 1:28 did NOT extend to fellow humans. It is also pointed out that pagan philosophers, like Aristotle, regarded some people as natural slaves, and "Enlightenment" philosophers hostile to Christianity such as Hume and Voltaire believed in inferiority of dark-skinned people. Darwinism added to the problem. Moreover, and a shock to skeptics, statements such as "Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade public life" were used by the 19th Century UK Prime Minister Lord Melbourne to support the status quo of slavery. Doesn't this sound like something comfortable in the mouth of an ACLU representative?

And then there is the question of science. It was Christianity that broke through the ancient pagan beliefs of repeating historical cycles (thus believing that progress was possible) and animism (which allowed natural objects to be scrutinized and studied). And as any good student of the history of science knows, it was practicing Christians like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton that laid much of the foundations of modern Science. And even with the black mark of Galileo, the church still was the leading supporter of astronomy for the first two-thirds of the second millenium, both in social and financial terms. The authors, in line with many historians of science, point out that the basis of modern science depends on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes sense only if it were designed and created by an orderly Creator (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33). But if polytheism or atheism were true, there is no way to deduce that the universe is, or should be, orderly. The Dominion Mandate gives us permission to investigate creation, unlike animism or pantheism, systems which teach that the creation itself is divine. Since God is sovereign, He was free to create as He pleased. So where the Bible is silent, the only way to find out how His creation works is to investigate, not rely on human-created philosophies, as did the ancient Greeks.

The book does have good material on the Galileo matter, citing the science historian John Heilbron, 'Galileo's heresy, according to the standard distinction used by the Holy Office, was "inquisitorial" rather than "theological".' Heilbron's book "The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories" shows that Church-supported astronomers used the cathedrals themselves as solar observatories, which doesn't make much sense if the Church was anti-science. These meridiane were 'reverse sundials', or giant pinhole cameras where the sun's image was projected from a hole in a window in the cathedral's lantern onto a meridian line. Analyzing the sun's motion further weakened the Ptolemaic model, yet this research was well supported.

The authors also use Jeffrey Burton Russell's "Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians", a well-documented piece that demolishes the charge that the church taught a flat earth. Rather, this was a totally baseless myth fostered by 19th century writers with a huge anti-Christian axe to grind.

The book also points out that the Christian worldview inspired developments essential to the rise of modern scientific method: the logical thought patterns of the medieval Scholastic philosophers; the little-known but extensive inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity fostered by the monasteries. This does not mean they were right about everything, but the Middle Ages are often falsely dismissed as the "Dark Ages," despite a genuine industrial revolution, including inventions of water and wind power, labor-saving heavy ploughs, and ingenious architectural devices, such as flying buttresses.

The authors also rightly point out the error of trying to paint the Nazis as Christian, and document the stridently anti-Nazi statements by the Confessing Church and Pope Pius XII and their work in saving lives. In this section it would be better if some quotes were more thoroughly documented. They are in line with Justice Jackson's opening address at the Nuremberg Trials, e.g. 'The Nazi Party always was predominantly anti-Christian in its ideology', and 'carried out a systematic and relentless repression of all Christian sects and churches.' It is also consistent with the enormous amount of documentation by American Prosecutor, General William Donovan, that the Nazis also planned to systematically destroy Christianity. (This is now being published online at Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion.)

The book also counters much environmentalist blather by pointing out that Christianity has had a positive effect on the environment, while pagan and communist countries have often had baneful effects. Indeed, the Dominion Mandate is often savaged, because it records God commanding Man to have dominion over the Earth. However, the Hebrew word for dominion is radah, and 1 Kings 4:24-25 says that Solomon's radah resulted in peace, safety and 'each man under his own vine and fig tree'. So the type of radah must be decided by context. Since this was spoken by God into an Edenic situation, before the Fall, it is especially hard to imagine any sort of destructive or ruthless implication to them.

After this book, it may be fairly said that those who try to portray Christian history as one long period of tyranny and superstition have not the first clue what they are talking about. This is especially important to keep in mind when reading the ravings of John Shelby Spong and his ilk.