Category Archives: History

If our enemy wants to destroy our neighbour

To which one of those two do we then show more love?

I occasionally follow the blog of the “Bionic Mosquito” (BM).

Here’s an interesting question I found there recently:

The following comment was made in response to a post on Christian pacifism, Anabaptists, etc.

>>Charles Martel and John III Sobieski would be hearing “blah, blah, blah,” and even the most pacifist Christians, deep down inside, would have said at the two respective times, “thank God for Charles” … “thank God for John.”

We are called to love our neighbor and love our enemy.  But what if our enemy wants to destroy our neighbor?  To which one do we then show love?  Look into your child’s eyes while answering the question.<<

This does not mean viewing every new stranger in our midst as an enemy. BM’s important question however reminds us that we do not live in paradise. And that, even if we did, there’d probably be a serpent around somewhere. So, we need to be on our guard for the enemy.

The natural order of medieval society

Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Austrian school economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher, gave a talk in 2018 with the title “The Libertarian Quest for a Grand Historical Narrative“. In it, he said the following:

“While many libertarians fancy an anarchic social order as a largely horizontal order without hierarchies and different ranks of authority – as “anti-authoritarian” – the medieval example of a State-less society teaches otherwise. Peace was not maintained by the absence of hierarchies and ranks of authority, but by the absence of anything but social authority and ranks of social authority. Indeed, in contrast to the present order, which essentially recognizes only one authority, that of the State, the Middle Ages were characterized by a great multitude of competing, cooperating, overlapping and hierarchically ordered ranks of social authority. There was the authority of the heads of family households and of various kinship groups. There were patrons, lords, overlords and feudal kings with their estates, and their vassals, and the vassals of vassals. There were countless different and separate communities and towns, and a huge variety of religious, artistic, professional and social orders, councils, assemblies, guilds, associations and clubs, each with their own rules, hierarchies and rank orders. In addition, and of utmost importance, there were the authorities of the local priest, the more distant bishop, and of the Pope in Rome.”

It is exactly this multitude of hierarchies and authorities which could, in the long term, be the guarantor of freedom and prosperity. Historian, economist and theologian Dr. Gary North has identified four authorities in human societies that are biblically ordained: The individual, the family, the church and the state (or, in medieval times, proto-state). They are constantly competing against each other, attempting to become the monopoly authority, thereby however preventing a monopoly of any one of them. Sometimes however, one of them becomes overbearing. Then society crumbles and falls apart. And the competition begins anew.

North writes about these competing authorities extensively in his book “God’s Covenants“. This is from the introduction:

“This book discusses three covenantal units that have operated in history from the beginning: individual, church, and family. It then discusses a fourth covenantal institution, civil, which began after the Fall of man.”

From the conclusion of “The Relation Between Religion and Culture”

Great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest

This is part 10, the last part, of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

Dawson: “The great civilizations of the world do not produce the great religions as a kind of cultural by-product; in a very real sense the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest. A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture.” (271, my emphasis) (Progress and Religion, 1937)

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On the return to Christian unity and the predicament Christianity is in now

It has been replaced by "State-inspired public opinion and by the mass organisation of society on a purely secular basis"

This is part 8 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

Dawson: “Either Europe must abandon the Christian tradition and with it the faith in progress and humanity, or it must return consciously to the religious foundation on which these ideas were based.” (p. 225)

Dawson: “true foundation of European unity is to be found not in political or economic agreements, but in the restoration of the spiritual tradition on which that unity was originally based.” (p. 227, my emphasis)

Totalitarianism and the totalitarian state [are] a force that impedes the restauration of the Christian tradition in Western Culture. (p. 227)     

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On natural science

Does it inevitably lead to secularization?

This is part 7 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

Since the time of the Renaissance, natural science . . . was based on a mechanistic view of nature that destroyed the old spiritual unity of medieval Europe, and it failed to establish a real basis for unity in European culture. (p. 215)  

Dawson: “Thus as I have suggested, the progress of Western civilisation by science and power seems to lead to a state of total secularization in which both religion and freedom simultaneously disappear.” (p. 218)

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On the industrial revolution

It was built on the foundation of Christian revivals

This is part 6 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

[I]n England, they attempted to steer a middle course between traditional Christianity and the new ideas, and simultaneously devoted themselves to practical utilitarian activity. They put the new science into practical use, and at the same time developed a new social type, the hard-working, conscientious, abstemious man of business, who considered his work a kind of religious vocation. The “narrow and intense spirit of Puritanism,” remarks Dawson, “permeated the whole movement, and gave English middle-class society the moral force to carry out the vast material labour of the Industrial Revolution.” (p. 212)

(PwG:) Vishal Mangalwadi, in his magnificent book “The Book That Made Your World – How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization”, published 2011, argues that, without the Christian revivals in the UK and the American colonies (later the US), these regions would have been much more strongly influenced by the French Revolution than they were. That is why the Industrial Revolution started in Britain and the US, and not in continental Europe. 

On the Enlightenment as a “Religion of Progress”

The French Revolution is still ongoing

This is part 5 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

Out of this rationalistic current of ideas [the Enlightenment in France and Deism in England] developed the idea of Progress or human perfectibility that became the religion of many of the intellectuals of Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (p. 208)

Dawson: “while the God of the Deists was but a pale abstraction, a mere deus ex machina, the belief in Progress was an ideal capable of stirring men’s emotions and arousing a genuine religious enthusiasm. Nor was it limited to the followers of the French philosophic rationalism. It played an equally important part in the formation of German Idealism and English Utilitarian Liberalism.” (p. 209)

Dawson: “the French Revolution was not so much a revolt against misgovernment and oppression, as an attempt to restore the unity of European society on the foundation of new ideas.” (p. 210)

(PwG:) That last comment is interesting in the modern context, for this attempt is still ongoing.

On Lutheranism and Calvinism

The former promoted a passive attitude towards the state, the latter was a revolutionary force

This is part 4 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

Direct quote from Dawson: “Lutheranism and Calvinism . . . produce totally different social attitudes and have become embodied in opposite political traditions. For while Lutheranism almost from the beginning adopted a passive attitude towards the state and accepted a highly conservative and even patriarchal conception of political authority, Calvinism has proved a revolutionary force in European and American history and has provided the moral dynamic element in the great expansion of bourgeois culture from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.” (p. 204/205, my emphases)

Direct quote from Dawson: “Calvinism [is] . . . much nearer to Catholicism in its conception of the relation of Church and State and in its assertion of the independence and supremacy of the spiritual power.” (p. 205)

However:

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On the Renaissance

In began with a sense of godlike freedom, but led to a sense of misery and weakness

This is part 3 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

“In Southern Europe, the Renaissance developed as a reaction against medieval culture. On this point Dawson says:

              It was a true national awakening. Men saw the revival of classical learning as a recovery of a lost inheritance. They revolted against the mediaeval culture not on religious grounds but because it was alien and uncivilized. They entered on a crusade to free the Latin world from the yoke of Gothic barbarism.” (p. 200)

Dawson quote: “[In the Renaissance] Life was regarded not as a pilgrimage towards eternity, but as a fine art in which every opportunity for knowledge and enjoyment was to be cultivated.” (p. 200)

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On religion and medieval science

The church should have a say in what should be done, and what shouldn't

This is part 2 of my notes on the thoughts and ideas of Christopher Dawson. (In brackets the page numbers of each quote from TRBRAC, unless another book mentioned. “PwG” refers to my own thoughts.)     

“Dawson recognizes that the Western thinkers [of the Middle Ages] were aided by the Arabs and the Jews of the Western Mediterranean world.” (p. 183)

Connor quotes Dawson: “But if the scholars of the West had a great deal of ground to make up, they lost no time in doing so.” (p. 183)

“The introduction of the new science into Europe constituted a danger to the Christian religion, even as it did so to Judaism and to Islam.” (p. 183)

“Nevertheless, the task of reconciling the Aristotelian science with the teachings of the Christian religion was not abandoned: it found able and successful protagonists amongst some of the greatest minds of the Church. . . . it was St. Thomas of Aquin who actually accomplished the reconciliation.” (p. 184)

“[Medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger] Bacon realized the possibilities of science; he believed that it should be controlled by the Church and directed along lines that would enhance the spiritual power and prove socially beneficial.” (p. 187, my emphasis)

Dawson: “When Bacon sings the praises of experimental science that can create automobiles and flying machines and devices that will destroy a whole army at once, he is the prophet of modern science, nor can we, in these days of mechanized warfare and mechanized production, afford altogether to despise his warnings of the danger of allowing these vast forces to escape moral direction and social control.” (p. 188, my emphasis) (from: Mediaeval Religion, 1935)

(PwG:) In other words: The fact that we can do something doesn’t imply that we should. The church is the one institution that should and could play a much stronger role in the discussion as to what science should and shouldn’t do. We need God’s guidance not so much on what to discover, but on what to put into use. However, nowadays nothing is discovered “by chance” anymore. The “lab leak” theory of the Covid virus indicates that research was and is going on about how to change features of viruses to make them more dangerous/deadly to humans. The churches should ask the question, loudly: What’s the point? And excommunicate politicians, scientists, engineers etc. involved in such research. (On the force of excommunication nowadays I hope to post another text in future.)