The path towards development, prosperity and peace has been tangled and marked by setbacks but it is notable that, whether measuring from the global logistics revolution of the 1500s or the industrial revolution of 1750 or the digital revolution of 2000, in all instances these shifts have occurred first in nations with strong Christian traditions (and particularly Protestant Christian traditions).
Development itself is a complex amalgamation of causal roots. Geography, topography, institutions, religion, culture, language, political institutions, rule of law, technological path dependence, historical path dependence, resources, etc. They all play an evolving role to where we are. I am not claiming that Christianity is a necessary or even sufficient cause. But I cannot help but notice that the counterfactuals of durable sustained progress in the absence of Christianity are few and far between.
I don't even have a particular bead on what aspects of Christianity might be critical to overall progress and productivity. Is it grace or redemption or monotheism or free will or the model of the servant leader or suffering on behalf of others, the tradition of forgiveness, the call to love thy neighbor as yourself, etc.? Those and many other attributes might be logical aspects that create the circumstances that have eased the path towards progress and productivity. But I don't know which and to what degree.
I just suffer a residual concern that our totalitarian Mandarin Class might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater with no inkling as to what they are doing.
From Frohnen:
Anyone who knows anything about the Judeo-Christian tradition (an increasingly small group, I know), is aware that the Hebrew law “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was intended to limit the bloodthirsty drive for vengeance. As Saint Augustine observed, “For who will of his own accord be satisfied with a vengeance equal to the injury? Do we not see men, only slightly hurt, eager for slaughter, thirsting for blood, as if they could never make their enemy suffer enough?” Augustine explained that the precept against excess vengeance instituted a principle of compensation, which “instead of being a brand to kindle a fire that was quenched, was rather a covering to prevent the fire already kindled from spreading.”
Of course, Christ’s admonition to “turn the other cheek” properly serves as an admonition to set aside compensation as well as excessive vengeance, and instead practice forgiveness. As Augustine again noted, Christ presented to us the opportunity to forego compensation and so take ourselves “further from the sin of an unjust vengeance.” Such virtue, beyond mere justice, is the practice of love and pleasing to God.
Christ’s call to forgiveness has played an important role shaping Christianity’s civilizing influence on man and society. The Golden Rule. Increasing recognition of the intrinsic dignity of the person. Increasing discomfort with lustful engagement in violence (something on which Augustine wrote a great deal). All these combined with Christ’s Word to encourage amelioration of the severity of retribution and punishment. One might even claim that Christianity truly civilized mankind, taming our savage nature through the ministrations of God’s love.
Sadly, such claims bespeak more the pride of the speaker than the reality of human nature. It is true that spectacles of public torture and various cruel practices, especially within our penal system, have been lessened or abolished in cultures under the sway of Christianity. But human cruelty remains with us, and is making a very vengeful comeback.
[snip]
Napoleon brought back total war in the name of “the people” and in service to arrogant ideology. But it was the totalitarian heresy of the twentieth century—irrational faith in the human capacity to transform reality through will and violence—that broke the back of Christian restraint in public life. That said, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and the whole long line of murderous tyrants who sought to displace God were not the only purveyors of cruelty. Some in the name of the Church, others in the name only of themselves, joined in the global orgy of violence.
And then there were the Progressives. The death cult of totalitarian ideology shared with supposedly more civilized “progressive” would-be saviors a willingness to treat people as objects to be made use of in the name of a far-off paradise. Hitler was not, after all, the originator of “scientific” de-valuing of supposedly defective human beings. The dream of biological perfection brought forced sterilization under Progressive regimes, continued with totalitarian death camps, and remains with us today as children with various disabilities are thrown into the furnace in the name of a utilitarian calculus regarding what makes a life worth living—and what makes a person worth caring for, and even being allowed to live.
My point is the simple but too often overlooked one that civilization is far more fragile than we would like to believe. As we dispense with religious institutions, beliefs, and practices—as we dispense with God Himself in the ridiculous belief that we are enough on our own—we leave ourselves open to barbarism within and a more overt barbarism from without. For far too long we have been living off the bank and capital of the Christian ages even as we deny the value of the currency we spend. God insists on being loved for Himself. But even a belated recognition that such love is necessary for the possibility of any kind of decent life here on earth might help us recognize the necessity of order in the soul and, from there, the source of such order in God. Only by recognizing God’s will and His love can we recognize the dignity of ourselves and our fellow men. And only then will it be possible, however unlikely, that we will behave as, and become, decent human beings.
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