Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, The
Rodney Stark
Number of quotes: 14
Book ID: 277 Page: 7
Section: 4A
Leading Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas were not what today might be called strict constructionists. Rather, they celebrated reason as the means to gain greater insight into divine intentions.
Quote ID: 6955
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 277 Page: x
Section: 4B
Supposing that capitalism did produce Europe’s great leap forward, it remains to be explained why it developed only in Europe.. . . .
But if one digs deeper, it becomes clear that the truly fundamental basis not only for capitalism but for the rise of the West was an extraordinary faith in reason.
Quote ID: 6952
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 10
Section: 4A
The Christian commitment to progress through rationality reached its heights in the Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, published in Paris late in the thirteenth century. This monument to the theology of reason consists of logical “proofs” of Christian doctrine and set the standard for all subsequent Christian theologians.
Quote ID: 6956
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 11
Section: 4A
...Saint John Chrysostom noted that even the seraphim do not see God as he is. Instead, they see “a condescension accommodated to their nature. What is this condescension?Pastor John notes: John’s note: what?
Quote ID: 6957
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 277 Page: 12
Section: 4B
The so-called Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth century has been misinterpreted by those wishing to assert an inherent conflict between religion and science. Some wonderful things were achieved in this era, but they were not produced by an eruption of secular thinking. Rather, these achievements were the culmination of many centuries of systematic progress by medieval Scholastics, sustained by that uniquely Christian twelfth-century invention, the university. Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable—the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious Christian scholars.{32}
Quote ID: 6958
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 24
Section: 4B
Compare Shakespeare’s tragedies with those of the ancient Greeks. As Colin Morris pointed out, Oedipus did nothing to earn his sad end. His “personal character ...is really irrelevant to his misfortunes, which were decreed by fate irrespective of his own desires.”{64}. . . .
In contrast, Othello, Brutus, and the Macbeths were not captives of blind fate. As Cassius pointed out to Brutus, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”{65}
Quote ID: 6959
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 277 Page: 28
Section: 4B
But enough! Slavery ended in medieval Europe only because the church extended its sacraments to all slaves and then managed to impose a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and of Jews). Within the context of medieval Europe, that prohibition was effectively a rule of universal abolition.
Quote ID: 6960
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 29
Section: 4B
So long as the Roman empire stood, the church continued to affirm the legitimacy of slavery.
Quote ID: 6961
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 85
Section: 4B
Copy map
Quote ID: 6962
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: ix
Section: 4B
When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was not the existence of the Western Hemisphere but the extent of their own technological superiority over the rest of the world. Not only were the proud Mayan, Aztec, and the Inca nations helpless in the face of European intruders; so were the fabled civilizations of the East: China, India, and even Islam were backward by comparison with sixteenth-century Europe.. . . .
Why was it that, for centuries, Europeans were the only ones possessed of eyeglasses, chimneys, reliable clocks, heavy cavalry, or a system of music notation?
Quote ID: 6950
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: ix
Section: 4B
The most convincing answer to these questions attributes Western dominance to the rise of the capitalism, which also took place only in Europe.
Quote ID: 6951
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: xi
Section: 4B
Rather, the West is said to have surged ahead precisely as it overcame religious barriers to progress, especially those impeding science. Nonsense. The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.. . . .
Such academic anti-Catholicism inspired the most famous book ever written on the origins of capitalism.
Quote ID: 6953
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 226
Section: 4B
A major point of contention during the Reformation had to do with reading the Bible. For centuries the church had thought the best way to avoid endless bickering and disagreement about God’s word was to encourage only well-trained theologians to actually read the Bible. To this end, the church opposed all translations of the bible into contemporary languages, thus limiting its readers to those proficient in Latin or Greek, which even most of the clergy were not. Moreover, in the days before the printing press there were so very few copies of the bible that even most bishops did not have access to one. Consequently, the clergy learned about the Bible from secondary sources written to edify them and to provide them with suitable quotations for preaching. What the public knew about the Bible was only what their priests told them.….
As had been feared, a great deal of disagreement and conflict quickly arose as one reformer after another denounced various church teachings and activities as unbiblical.
Quote ID: 6963
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 277 Page: 233
Section: 1A
Christianity created Western Civilization. Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls.….
The modern world arose only in Christian societies. Not in Islam. Not in Asia. Not in a “secular” society – there having been none. And all the modernization that has since occurred outside Christendom was imported from the West, often brought by colonizers and missionaries. Even so, many apostles of modernization assume that, given the existing Western example, similar progress can be achieved today not only without Christianity but even without freedom or capitalism – that globalization will fully spread scientific, technical, and commercial knowledge without any need to re-create the social or cultural conditions that first produced it.
Quote ID: 6964
Time Periods: 7
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