Christianity’s unique philosophy

MadArchitect

A quick note on the issue of heresy. I haven't read through the rest of this thread, but as regards heresy, what you have to understand is, that functionally, heresy was initially a way of demarcating orthodoxy, which is really just another way of saying that declaring a doctrine heretical was a way of feeling out what the Church was all about. That means two things: 1) it means that a doctrine was only heretical if it purported to be a part of Christian belief, and 2) that, at least initially, heresy was very much about maintaining the logical consistency between points of doctrine that were already well-established. The first point is important because the reason that heresy had such a stigma attached to it is that the heretics initially wanted to align themselves with the Church. The Church was not, in the early phases, some monolithic institution beyond all reproach -- it's appeal to early Christians was that it was a community of belief, and they wanted to be a part of that community, even if membership made them a target in the eyes of the powers that be. In that regard, calling a doctrine, like Manicheism, for example, heretical wasn't much different from a group like the Libertarian party distancing themselves from a a splinter group that espouses, say, a ban on gay marriage. It's essentially a way of saying, "That isn't what we're all about, and we don't want anyone associating that belief with our group." What happened in effect is that much of the growing body of doctrine in the early Church arose as the church fathers considered various ideas that were coming up from affiliated communities and decided whether or not they fit in with the rest of Christian doctrine. And in a lot of cases, these heretical ideas really did cause problems with already accepted Christian doctrine. Logical consistency was a key issue in determining whether or not a doctrine was heretical -- if you couldn't reconcile it with what the Church already held to be important, then obviously you couldn't adopt it as part of the belief system. You could jettison the whole system, or modify the whole -- and the church did sometimes modify the whole system, such that former church fathers were later deemed heretical -- but that only means that the history of heresy and doctrine is largely a history of retrospect.

Where all of this gets problematic is in the later ages when the Church has become essentially the keystone in the whole of European civilization. But that happened by a very gradual process, almost imperceptibly, and was not apparantly the goal of the founders or early innovators in the Church. Vast changes took place between those early years and the later hegemony of the Church, and it's important to maintain a clear sense of the dynamic historical development and the way it impacted ideas like heresy.

Anyway...

Also, in regards to the development of medieval technology, you two may have overlooked an important factor: social construction. A feudal society, like that which persisted from about the 9th century onward, is unlikely to produce the sort of technological development that a capitalist, free-enterprise economy fosters. Soviet society was ostensibly secular, but its social and economic structure left it ill-equipped to innovate with its technology. Most soviet technology resulted from the reallocation of vast resources into the Cold War competition over military superiority -- it's doubtful whether soviet society would have developed, say, space flight, without the impetus provided by rumors of American space flight. While there were technological advances during the medieval period, the society itself would have to reorganize itself in order to produce the sort of sustained, interested technological development we associate with modernity, and that reorganization was finally the result of outside forces.

Frank 013

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It's essentially a way of saying, "That isn't what we're all about, and we don't want anyone associating that belief with our group."

This fit in perfectly with my expectations of church tolerance.

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Where all of this gets problematic is in the later ages when the Church has become essentially the keystone in the whole of European civilization. But that happened by a very gradual process, almost imperceptibly, and was not apparently the goal of the founders or early innovators in the Church.

Yes, the rule was abused by influential, corrupt people who had been given too much power, (this is by no means limited to the church) the effect was still limitation of free thought and suppression of scientific, medical, cultural and philosophical development.

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social construction. A feudal society, like that which persisted from about the 9th century onward, is unlikely to produce the sort of technological development that a capitalist, free-enterprise economy fosters.

I was not overlooking this; it is another result of the Fall of Rome, and one more limitation (in the list of many) that existed during the Dark Ages.

Later

MadArchitect

Frank 013: Yes, the rule was abused by influential, corrupt people who had been given too much power, (this is by no means limited to the church) the effect was still limitation of free thought and suppression of scientific, medical, cultural and philosophical development.

I don't think it was simply a matter of abuse. The change in the scope and office of the Church resulted in changes in character. Think of it this way: if a chess club disbarred any member who advocated using timers during play on grounds that it shifted the emphasis away from strategy and towards stock reaction, we'd probably think it somewhat eccentric, but we wouldn't exactly pity the ejected member. He could always go join a different club, or start his own. But if the chess club were the biggest chess club in the world, and included every prominant world leader, and if those leaders conducted a great deal of business under the auspices of the chess club, then exclusion from the club would be geometrically more problematic. The heresy of advocating time clocks during play would be more problematic because advocating it too strongly would amount to excluding one's self from the society in which one lived, regardless of whether or not the chess club wanted to be the sole arbiter of social integration.

So, yes, there were abuses, and opponents of organized religion tend to make a very big deal of those abuses, but the bigger impact was, I think, made by the extent to which Western society had organized itself around the Church. Even a necessary, functional practice like that by which an isolated community defines itself can become sinister when it is retained by a totalistic community.

I was not overlooking this; it is another result of the Fall of Rome, and one more limitation (in the list of many) that existed during the Dark Ages.

I think it's a limitation only if you're willing to vouch for a particular point of view. The medievals (and, incidentally, the Dark Ages are generally recognized to have ended by the Carolingian renaissance, circa 800-900 CE) may not have developed much technologically, but they developed art and society to a high pitch of refinement. The further you persue medieval history, the more that refinement may resemble a straightjacket, but I feel sure that the more technology progresses, the more the same complaint will be applicable to our own society.

Nor, might I add, does it strike me as a direct consequence of the Fall of Rome. Feudalistic society arose in large part as the consequence of the introduction of new technology to Europe, equestrian technology specifically, and more to the point: the stirrup. This made calvary more important, and the land requirements involved in keeping and training horses required a reorganization of land ownership and social hierarchy. Those were the terms under which feudalism developed.

Edited by: MadArchitect at: 3/16/07 3:10 pm

Frank 013

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Mad
Nor, might I add, does it strike me as a direct consequence of the Fall of Rome.

Feudalism was a direct result of the fall of Rome, without the fall the vacuum of authority would not have been there for the system to have developed.

Later

MadArchitect

You're right to the degree that feudalism probably could not have arisen in conjunction with Rome. If nothing else, the Carolingian redistribution of land was probably a great deal easier under the Chruch than it would have been under the Empire. But the Fall of Rome only opened a vaccum. That vacuum could have been filled by any number of competing social systems -- the eventual domination of the Byzantine Empire, for example, or a system of city-states like that of the pre-Empire Greeks. That feudalism arose is due to a specific confluence of social and cultural factors that had very little to do with Rome. One of the factors, as I've pointed out, was the introduction of an Oriental technology -- the stirrup -- that gave to European calvary an importance that it never had in Rome. Another was the system of loyalties sanctified by Christian religion, which probably would not have found similar sanction under Roman statist polytheism. Saying that feudalism arose as a direct result of the Fall of Rome implies too linear an aspect to history, which is one of the drawbacks of such far-reaching hindsight. It takes a great deal more effort to imagine that pivotal moments in history were as likely as current events to go another way rather than the one we see in print.

Frank 013

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Mad
You're right to the degree that feudalism probably could not have arisen in conjunction with Rome. If nothing else, the Carolingian redistribution of land was probably a great deal easier under the Church than it would have been under the Empire. But the Fall of Rome only opened a vacuum.

The Roman Empire also set up the church to be in a position of power when it fell. The Christian church held more manpower, land, money and influence after Constantine than any other religion in Roman history.

So not only did the fall of Rome provide the vacuum, it also set up the church to be in a good position to take over.

Later


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