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7/18/2022 Christianity Marxism and the Death of Reason in the Ancient World. By: Thomas RigginsRead Now Charles Freeman’s The Closing of the Western Mind is a great introduction to the origins of Christian thought. Today, with so many competing versions of Christianity, ranging from traditional Orthodox and Catholic views to liberal socially conscious Protestantism and right-wing evangelical fundamentalism, it is helpful to have a guide such as this which explains, supplemented by a Marxist outlook, how the original Christianity of the ancient world came about. Freeman will do a credible job of tracing this history from Roman times to the High Middle Ages. In his Introduction he tells us that he will be dealing with ‘’a significant turning point’’ in Western civilization. The point he has in mind is that time in the fourth and fifth centuries AD “when the tradition of rational thought established by the Greeks was stifled.” It would take the West a thousand years to recover. The Greek rational tradition was firmly established by the fifth century BC — its two greatest founders were Plato and his student Aristotle. Unfortunately, Freeman confuses modern day empiricism with rationality and misapprehends the significance of Plato, following in the footsteps of his master Socrates, in the establishment of the rational method in Greece. Plato’s thought was not “an alternative to rational thought” but one of the most extreme examples of it, subjecting all beliefs to the test of logical argument whenever possible. Be that as it may, Freeman thinks that the Greek rational tradition, today’s term would be “scientific,” was deliberately squashed by the Roman government from the time of Constantine with the aid of the official church. The wide-open intellectual environment of the Roman Empire, both religiously and philosophically, came to an end in the 4th century when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the “official” state religion. The “official” version became the only legal version and thus was the “orthodox” version, “The imposition of orthodoxy,” Freeman writes, “Went hand in hand with the stifling of any form of independent reasoning.” Christianity was from the onset anti-rational. Freeman writes, “ It had been the Apostle Paul who declared war on the Greek rational tradition through his attacks on ‘the wisdom of the wise’ and ’the empty logic of the philosophers’ …” When Christianity became the official creed it closed down any contrary thinking thus dooming the West to a thousand yeas of backwardness. A good example of this mind closing is given by Freeman when he discusses the dispute between St. Ambrose and the traditional Roman senator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus. To my way thinking Symmachus had an open modern mind while Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan and teacher of S. Augustine, was a bigot. “In the late fourth century the seat of the Western Empire was in Milan and there were still many pagans (believers in the old traditional religion) who wished to be free to continue their form of religion. The Christian authorities were determined to repress all forms of religion save their own. One of the major symbols of the traditional religion was the Altar of Peace which adorned the Senate in Rome. The Christians had it removed in 383 AD. Symmachus and other senators petitioned the Emperor to have it restored. Ambrose (a major power behind the throne) was opposed and the petition failed. The mindsets of the two sides are clearly expressed in the following written exchange.” “Symmachus: ‘What does it matter by which wisdom each of us arrives at the truth? It is not possible that only one road leads to so sublime a mystery.’ Ambrose: ‘What you are ignorant of, we know from the word of God. And what you try to infer, we have established as truth from the very wisdom of God’” The Truth, however, should be able to triumph without the aid of the rack and the stake. Paul himself had no personal knowledge of Jesus in the flesh. Freeman asserts that the intolerance of the Christians (their rejection of logic and science) stems from Paul. What is worse, when, for political reasons the Roman state adopted the religion and forced it upon everyone, its motive was to control the minds of the population for the benefit of the empire. The actual teachings of Jesus were no more suited to the ends desired by the Romans than they are to the actions of US imperialism today and the fundamentalist and evangelicals who blindly support it in the name of patriotism. Paul, according to Freeman, distanced himself from the original 12 disciples (who distrusted his claims) and ended up, as we know, creating a theology that appealed to the Greco-Roman world and was rejected by the Jewish community from which Jesus came. In order to do this the real “historical” Jesus and his teachings (peace not war, forgiveness not vengeance, love and respect, not hatred and contempt— i.e., Martin Luther King, Jr, not Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robinson) had to be replaced with an unreal Christ beyond history. Thus, Freeman writes, “Paul makes a point of stressing that faith in Christ does not involve any kind of identification with Jesus in his life on earth but has validity only in his death and resurrection.” Thus the burden of actually having to follow the particular ethical path that Jesus the human trod is removed. [What is called “Christianity” today ought rather to be called “Paulism.”] Since the claims made for Jesus as the Christ are simply impossible to accept from the point of view of reason, reason is dumped and is replaced by “faith.” Freeman gives the following quote from the fourth century ascetic Anthony: “Faith arises from the disposition of the soul, those who are equipped with the faith have no need of verbal argument.” It is also interesting note, as Freeman does, that Anthony was claimed not to have learned ‘to read or write, the point being made by his biographer that academic achievement was not important for ‘a man of God’ and could even be despised.”… achieving a fill identification Freeman is incorrect, I think, in holding that the personal commitment Christians made to Christ (becoming “a single body with Christ through his death and then rising with him from the dead”) was “something new in antiquity.” This very belief was characteristic of the devotees of the Egyptian god Osiris whose worship in the cult of Isis and Osiris was widespread throughout the Roman Empire and whose popularity may explain why Christianity proved to be so popular to the Greco-Roman population. Mary idolatry, still rampant in some forms of Christianity, may have stemmed from this cult connection as well. Freeman points out that Isis was the patron goddess of mariners and her symbol was the rose. Mary replaced her as the patroness of sailors and her symbol was also the rose. He also writes, “representations of Isis with her baby son Horus on her knee seem to provide the iconic background for those of Mary and the baby Jesus.” The Greek rational tradition demanded that people think for themselves and take responsibility for their actions. Christianity introduced a different conception of moral responsibility. It introduced the idea of “don’t think, just follow orders.” Freeman quotes long extract from William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which a Jesuit explains the value of living the monastic life (every religion has something similar to this as well as some political groups on the left as well as the right). The Jesuit explains that if you obey the orders of your religious superior, no matter what they are, you can do no wrong! “The Superior may commit a fault in commanding you to do this or that, but you are certain that you commit no fault as long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you received …. The moment what you did was done obediently, God wipes it out of your account….” Nice! Not even God respects the Geneva Conventions, why should the U.S. or anyone else? “Here the abdication to think for oneself is complete. The book clearly demonstrates that religion in the West has been used to deprecate and reject reason (unless the church can misuse it in its own interests). It also demonstrates that in the modern world ,the progressive part at any rate, represents a return to the Greek outlook. When Freeman, in reference to the teachings of the church, writes”The ancient Greek tradition that one should be free to speculate without fear and be encouraged to take individual moral responsibility for one’s views was rejected,” we can today assert that now in the 21st century, despite the tragic history of”real existing socialism” in the past century, no genuine Marxist committed to genuine people’s democracy would agree with the church on this matter. The most important internal reason for the collapse of the socialist block, I think, may have been the lack of real participatory democracy and citizen involvement. Traditional Christianity as well as fundamentalism may likewise now be facing this malaise which is also characteristic of American and other bourgeois “democracies, as well as some contemporary so-called Marxist groups which have learned nothing from the past. What Freeman writes about the Church can be extended to these other groups as well. “Intellectual self confidence and curiosity which lay at the heart of the Greek achievement, were recast as the dreaded sin of pride. Faith and obedience to the institutional authority of the church were more highly rated than the use of reasoned thought. The inevitable result was intellectual stagnation.” Reading Freeman’s well written and interesting book will give you a great background and a deep historical understanding as to how Christianity came to dominate the Western world for over a thousand years, and what that has cost in terms of intellectual degradation, and how, if the peoples of the West are to better their condition in this new century they must regain the intellectual confidence so characteristic of Greek civilization. I would maintain that the Marxist tradition, freed from the failed authoritarian models of the last century, is the best contemporary intellectual tool to achieve this end. But it is important to note that the Greeks were not the only people to have a rational outlook. Similar thinkers can be found in the “classical” periods of other cultures such as Ancient Egypt, China, India, and the Islamic culture of the Middle, to name but four, and the hope of a progressive future rests on a blending of the best progressive tendencies of all cultures. AuthorThomas Riggins is a retired philosophy teacher (NYU, The New School of Social Research, among others) who received a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center (1983). He has been active in the civil rights and peace movements since the 1960s when he was chairman of the Young People's Socialist League at Florida State University and also worked for CORE in voter registration in north Florida (Leon County). He has written for many online publications such as People's World and Political Affairs where he was an associate editor. He also served on the board of the Bertrand Russell Society and was president of the Corliss Lamont chapter in New York City of the American Humanist Association. Archives July 2022
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