Tell Me, Mr. Gandhi, What Do You Think Of Western Civilization? | Culture | The American Scene
Filed under: Culture Tell Me, Mr. Gandhi, What Do You Think Of Western Civilization? As a fellow objector to the term, “Judeo-Christian,” I’m inclined to take Razib’s side in his dialogue with Ross Douthat. But I’m not sure “Judeo-Islamic” makes any more sense.
Christianity is, from the outside, a “strong misreading” of Judaism (and, from the inside, it’s Judaism that is a weak misreading of Israelite religion); Islam looks, from the outside, rather like an imitation of Judaism (and, from the inside, it’s Judaism which is a degenerate form of Islam). From a Christian perspective, what Ross says – that the common scripture creates more fruitful grounds for dialogue between Christians and Jews than between Muslims and Jews – might seem sensible. But from a Jewish perspective, I’m not sure that’s the case. It’s arguably easier to dialogue with someone who’s reading a different book in the same way than with someone who’s reading the same book in a very different (and incompatible) way. Another way to put it: Christians need to have a relationship of some kind with Judaism (if not with Jews), but Muslims basically don’t. But why should that make relations between Christians and Jews (or between Christianity and Judaism, if you prefer) more fruitful as opposed to more fraught? After all, Judaism doesn’t need a relationship with Christianity. How do lopsided relationships like that usually work out?
I agree with Ross that the term, “Judeo-Christian” is a way of “baptizing” Jews into America’s overwhelmingly Christian culture – and that’s exactly why I don’t like it. I also don’t like it because I suspect it’s a way of kashering an intellectual attempt to Christianize the Enlightenment. To argue that modern liberal democracy is an outgrowth of Christianity – and is ultimately parasitic on a living Christian community – well, that might be taken more amiss than to argue that it’s an outgrowth of “Judeo-Christian” tradition, whatever that is.
But Razib’s assertion that Judaism was, for most of its history “not part of Western civilization” is, I think, inadequate. If there is an Indian civilization, the Parsis are part of it, are they not? The only way to take the Jews of Europe out of the story of Western civilization is by limiting yourself to the times and places where the Jewish community was numerically insignificant – that is to say, in Ashkenaz in the Dark Ages.
Moreover, what is this “Western Civilization” of which you speak as if it were an unbroken chain from Athens to Los Angeles? One of the peculiarities of Western civilization (as against, for example, Chinese civilization – that’s my impression, anyway) is the extreme porousness of its boundaries. Western civilization famously has its roots in Athens and Jerusalem, but Western civilization also has roots among the Germanic barbarians of the north, from whence we get many of our major languages and cherished political traditions (trial by jury, for example). And modern Western civilization as it actually exists has some substantial Jewish roots (Freud, Kafka, Einstein, Rothschild, all that). And Judaism as it actually exists in the West is the product of the Enlightenment – even Orthodoxy as it actually exists is such a product, unavoidably so. The ultra-Orthodox world may be so predominantly as a reaction (much like fundamentalist religious movements outside the West), but modern Orthodoxy is a very self-conscious attempt to recast traditional Judaism in terms that would make sense in a Western philosophical context. I don’t think that there is any actual tradition to provide content to the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” – but you could well make the argument that the West as it exists is a “Judeo-Christian civilization” simply because the scale of Jewish contributions to that civilization ought to be recognized (rather as the scale of African contributions ought to be recognized when we talk about the character of American civilization).
To some extent, the same can be said of the Islamic world – but only to some extent. If Goitein is right (and I’m in no position to dispute with giants like him), mature (that is to say, medieval) Rabbinic Judaism owes as much to Islam as classical Islam owes to early Rabbinic Judaism. (Note, for example, that while the Talmud plainly is a record of argument about arguments – Amora’im elaborating on the debates of the Tanna’im – far removed from Mosaic times, it is treated by the tradition as if it were something akin to the hadith – a record that ultimately traces itself back to sayings of the founding prophet of the faith.) But I’m not sure that after the period of earliest origins Islam took all that much from Judaism. Nor was there any theological reason for it to pay Judaism any mind until the emergence of Zionism forced the question. So the idea of a “Judeo-Islamic” tradition or civilization is rather a stretch.
If the goal is to do a taxonomy, you could group Jews and Christians together as common descendants of Israelite religion; you could group Jews, Muslims and classical Unitarians together as strict monotheists; you could group Jews, Hindus and Confucians together as ethno-religious systems; you could group Jews and Parsis together as oddball religious minorities . . . Each of those divisions makes sense for a specific purpose. The purpose of asserting a “Judeo-Christian” tradition, being political, probably suggests limited utility for analytical purposes.
great post as usual noah.
1) a muslim individual at talkislam.info suggests ross is misrepresenting islam and its relationship to judaism. i really don’t know enough about islam and how it views jews from a muslim perspective (not being muslim, and my non-arab muslim background having 0 interest in jews) aside from that they’re a people of the book, so formally recognized and tolerated. on problem is that ideally someone would know judaism, christian and islam well, but very few people do (usually individuals know one well, for obvious reasons).
2) i don’t think parsis were contributors to indian civilization either. in fact, they were even more marginal than jews. they were numerically trivial, and hand changed many of their folkways to match their gujerati neighbors (language and food). i don’t think syrian orthodox christians were contributors to indian civilization. muslims were contributors to indian civilization, arguably influence particular bhakti devotional sects and so forth, though indian islam and hinduism remain very distinct (sikhism is some way toward synthesizing aspects of both). like jews in the west, the parsi prominence in indian civilization in a recent phenomenon. it is a function of the particular relationship of the parsis to the new british raj, and their particular comparative advantages as a middleman minority. of course, parsis were critical in indian nationalism and politics. jinnah married a parsi, as did nehru’s daughter. but there is no zoroastro-indic civilizational heritage. parsis just lived in india and were tolerated. and like jews, they internalized aspects of the majority culture so that they were transformed (e.g., parsis are way more fixated on the idea than zoroastrianism is the ethnic iranian religion than zoroastrians from iran proper are, from what i understand, probably a form of caste consciousness which naturally evolved in india).
in sum, if you are talking about the cultural streams which formed the indian outlook from time immemorial, there were the pre-islamic ones (synthesis of aryan, dravidian, hindu, buddhist etc.) which became “hindu” after islam, and the islamic ones, which was influenced by, and was an influence upon, hinduism. christian and zoroastrian indians are affected by this too. jews in the west are influenced by christianity in the same way.
3) i don’t think liberalism necessarily is contingent upon christianity, but christianity was the religion of the west for most of the past 2,000 years. if we are going to use a religious term to define the civilization, i would use christian, whether we of the west are christian or not (i’m an atheist, but my background is muslim, and in the near past hindu as well, but i identify with the post-christian west). if we are not going to use a religious label, then you don’t need to label it as christian.
4) all correct that it is somewhat a folly to imagine a cultural phylogeny that is similar to that of genetics because of the ubiquity of horizontal transfer. but if one had to pick between three cladograms with christian, islam and judaism as the notes:
would christianity be the outgroup?
would judaism be the outgroup?
would islam be the outgroup?
would the relationships be unclear?
it depends on the criterion you use. if you emphasize evangelical orientation judaism is the outgroup, obviously. as the unitarians say, the question can sometimes be the answer :)
— razib · Jan 15, 05:29 AM · #
p.s. as an analog with what i’m talking about in “protestantizing judaism” (e.g., reform), both parsis and syrian orthodox christians in india have “indianized” themselves in some ways (though i know that many of the christians have kerala have started becoming “more christian” under the influence of world wide christianity). so have many muslims, though as i said the muslim-indian relationship has been more of a two way street.
— razib · Jan 15, 06:33 AM · #
Many assessments of the affinities, or lack thereof, between Judaism and Christianity depend in part upon (crudely speaking) the ambient social and political environment in which the assessment is made, and the dimensions of Judaism and Christianity that receive preeminent emphasis in that environment. Buber and Rosenzweig, for example, of course prefer Judaism to Christianity, but present Christianity as a kind of second-best, universalizing religious option for Gentiles that reveals a loving personal God closely connected to Judaism. During the Middle Ages, however (esp. among Sephardim), Islam was considered closer to Judaism than Christianity by many Jews, on the grounds that Christianity was not sufficiently monotheistic. Since it was in part a motivation for the post by Noah, it’s worth mentioning that I would be very chary of thinking about the Enlightenment as constituting a simple break with Christianity, or something that has an only accidental relation to Christian Europe. Jonathan Israel has made a heroic effort to make the case that the Enlightenment sprung from Spinoza’s (admittedly extraordinary) intellect like Athena from Zeus’ head, but it stretches plausibility in several directions. If one identifies the Enlightenment in contemporary shorthand with religious toleration, government by consent of the governed, scientific inquiry, technological innovation, and mass literacy and basic education, it is very difficult to argue that these emerged as viable and widespread practices independently from or simply against Christian Europe. For primarily Scriptural and to a lesser extent Augustinian reasons, the split between sacred and secular power emerges in Christianity much more broadly and forcefully than it did the ancient world or in Islam (hence the persistent tensions between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy in the late Middle Ages, an epoch in which “secular” begins to mean something with a clear ancestral resemblance to what we mean by the term). The early arguments on behalf of religious toleration, from Cromwell to Locke, are filled with Gospel references, and popular sovereignty, from the defense of the rights of the “smallest he” in England by Independents (re: Congregationalists) at the Putney Debates to George III’s reference to the American Revolutionary War as a “Presbyterian Rebellion” testify to the robust connections between the appeal of self-government and the ecclesiology of dissenting Protestant Churches. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations gave an enormous stimulus to primary and secondary education over large parts of Europe, to offer better catechetical instruction amidst religious controversy and (esp. in Protestant areas), unfiltered access to the Bible. “The Enlightenment as world-historical break” thesis usually turns to science above all, but even there the evidence is very mixed. The Scientific Revolution runs its course before the eighteenth-century Enlightenment begins. Its founding thinkers are not necessarily estranged from Christianity personally or theoretically. Francis Bacon justified his own investigations as a means for invention oriented towards the relief of man’s estate, rooted in Christian charity; Descartes was extremely popular and often popularized by French Catholics, just as Anglicans enthused about and popularized the discoveries of Newton. Many of the important figures of the scientific revolution were themselves interested in the laws of nature as a way of thinking with a God of supreme rationality, a divine reason in which human reason could imperfectly participate (Newton certainly thought in these terms, and this notion of God as perfect rationality clearly owes a debt to Platonist Christians like Boethius, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc.). This doesn’t even touch upon the subject of Christian theology’s relation to the beginnings of modern science via late medieval developments like nominalism, etc. (Amos Funkenstein wrote the great book on this subject— and it’s still worth reading).
— Matt · Jan 15, 07:00 AM · #
If one identifies the Enlightenment in contemporary shorthand with religious toleration, government by consent of the governed, scientific inquiry, technological innovation, and mass literacy and basic education, it is very difficult to argue that these emerged as viable and widespread practices independently from or simply against Christian Europe.
let’s not talk in a socio-historical vacuum, shall we? religious toleration, consent of the governed, technological innovation, and mass literacy literacy and basic education are all found outside of christendom. the last two in china & japan at various times. the first in india and china and japan (see the argument made by the mongol khan to the christian missionary in the 13th century in favor of religious toleration). scientific inquiry is a separate and distinction issue, and you can make the argument of its necessary contingency upon christianity because i believe that science as such emerged only in one society, western europe in the 17th century, and that society was christian. i am personally skeptical that christianity is a necessary condition for the emergence of science, but that is a different argument. and for the record, i don’t think that the “enlightenment” is really contingent on christianity either in a necessary way. but, it is a fact that the enlightenment evolved out of a christian culture, and some figures in the enlightenment were believing christians. so i do not see it as necessarily an anti-christian movement either, or seeded by the rediscovery of classical paganism during the renaissance in a way that can be extracted out of its historical matrix.
— razib · Jan 15, 07:11 AM · #
I have to say I’m quite surprized by your objection to the “Judeo-Christian” term. It has always seemed to me that Judaism and Christianity have more in common than any other set of two religions (setting aside syncretic Asia, which happily mashes together their various religious traditions).
It seems to me that they are the only two religions that put such an emphasis on the individual, and on a positive decision by the individual to put their trust and faith in God. One of the reasons why I have such an almost boundless admiration for orthodox Judaism is because of the dedication it demands in adherence to the mitzvot — in any other religion adherence to such an onerous set of rules leaves me cold, but the reason why it fills me with awe in Judaism is because the rules are the expression of the individual Jew’s acceptance of and will to be closer to God. (I realize I’m likely grossly simplifying and/or misunderstanding, but I do think this is broadly correct.) This is not the same thing as islam, the submission which is demanded of the Muslim follower, and it is much closer of the individual conversion which is central to the Christian experience. When God asks Abraham for his son, he doesn’t bully him into giving him up — he asks for Abraham’s unconditional, but free-willing trust. It is this key reliance on the individual which, in my view, Judaism and Christianity are the only religions to truly share (at least to such an extent) and which can be rightly put at the root of Western Civilization, Enlightenment and all. (After all, if — to philosophize with a hatchet — the fathers of the Enlightenment are Descartes and Spinoza, how can it not be properly called “Judeo-Christian”?) When you write “you could well make the argument that the West as it exists is a “Judeo-Christian civilization” simply because the scale of Jewish contributions to that civilization ought to be recognized (rather as the scale of African contributions ought to be recognized when we talk about the character of American civilization)”, I think that’s right, but I also think there is a lot more to it.
— PEG · Jan 15, 11:45 AM · #
PEG, I think Noah’s point — one of his points in this outstanding post — is that it’s precisely all that Judaism and Christianity have in common that makes healthy relations so difficult. It’s the fact that Christians take the Hebrew Bible as their own scripture, and consider it God’s Word just as fully as the New Testament, that commits us to an ongoing and strenuous encounter with Judaism. Everything would have been easier if we had done what Islam did (and what the early Christian heretic Marcion wanted to do) and simply dismiss the Hebrew Bible as human words with no divine sanction. It’s a refusal to come to grips with this necessary encounter with an ongoing Judaism that has produced a great deal of Christian anti-Semitism: from one Christian point of view — a narrow and hateful, but not an uncommon, one — every Jew is a living testimony to the possibility that we’ve interpreted our Scriptures wrongly. So persecuting them to death or walling them up in ghettos are ways to keep those dark possibilities out of sight and out of mind.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 02:28 PM · #
Razib, your points are generally well-taken. I was responding to Noah’s remark objecting to the argument that liberal democracy, et. al., grows out of Christianity and has some (not unqualified, but some) positive ongoing relation to it. While I obviously don’t think it’s a coincidence that a variety of constituting, interrelated and enduring practices of modernity (with universalist aspirations) emerge in Christian Europe, it’s certainly not my argument that these discrete practices have never been considered or successfully deployed in East Asia and elsewhere, any more than I would make the obviously absurd argument that Europe has practiced them with unalloyed success during or since the Enlightenment. And yes, Europe’s non-Christian heritage (Greek, Roman, to a lesser extent Celtic, etc.) and thinkers (e.g., Spinoza) are also an important part of, as it were, modernity’s prehistory.
— Matt · Jan 15, 02:59 PM · #
Alan, are you suggesting that anti-Semitism is born of theological angst and doubt among Christians? That suggests a greater deal of sophistication among anti-Semites than I would like to credit. Anti-Semitism seems to me a lot cruder; a minority out-group is perceived to have advantages that the majority in-group does not, and this is deemed unfair and intolerable. It’s tribal vanity and jealousy, not a dispute over interpretations of the Torah, and it sullies those who think seriously about the differences and similarities between Judaism and Christianity to suggest it.
— Blar · Jan 15, 05:04 PM · #
This is tangential to what Noah is talking about but I do find it useful, often, to talk about the “Abrahamic” or what-have-you faith and sort of lump Judaism, Christianity, and Islam together into one religion (as well as I suppose Baha’i and Mormons and the like). I don’t think that’s unjustified, either: it’s not like there are hard-and-fast rules about what makes a difference between two systems of belief minor enough that we consider them different sects of the same religion, versus different religions. And the fact is that the gulf between that “Abrahamic” religion and (say) “Hinduism” is vast. You look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam from that perspective and you say, look, they’ve got the same cosmology, the same grand structure of the universe with God/Satan/people with their immortal souls, the same concept of what morality is for and what it does (and very similar moral structures), and even overlapping mythologies. I’ve generally felt that if (say) we dug up in Mayan ruins three so similar religions we’d just go ahead and call them all sectarian versions of the same thing.
And that kind of glossing over differences — or at least recognizing that they are minor against similarities — isn’t a bad starting point for that “Western Civilization” idea — though I’d be much more likely to do that sort of thing based on something like musical scales, personally.
— Sanjay · Jan 15, 06:02 PM · #
Blar, I’m not sure I totally understand your comment (especially the last sentence, where the “its” confuse me), but:
1) Anti-Semitism, sad to say, is not especially unsophisticated. As any reader of left-wing British (and more generally European) magazines can tell you, it’s often professed by highly educated people. And some of the most prominent and influential figures in Christian history have been horrifically anti-Semitic (St. Jerome, Martin Luther). Anti-Semitism would not have been such a powerful force in history if had only been professed by dimwits. (This does not mean that I have a good explanation for why many smart and well-educated people are prone to anti-Semitism.)
2) Historically, the economic success of European Jews is at least in part a result of institutionalized anti-Semitism. Many European Jews went into trade and banking because other professions (and in many cases land-ownership) were denied them. Vicious anti-Semitism long predates the familiar caricatures of the greedy Jewish moneylender.
3) There is plenty of evidence that early Christians — most of whom were Jews themselves, remember — were often consumed by anger at those who would not accept that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel. (Early rabbinical commentary on Christians is illuminating in this regard too.) So the core disputes were biblical and theological before they could have been “tribal,” because they went on among people in the same “tribe.” — Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 06:57 PM · #
It is this key reliance on the individual which, in my view, Judaism and Christianity are the only religions to truly share (at least to such an extent) and which can be rightly put at the root of Western Civilization, Enlightenment and all.
i think most muslims would totally disagree with this. there are bhakti sects of hinduism, and pure land buddhism, which are no different (one of the “sellable” points of islam is that it is a priestless religion where no one mediates between god & the individual-reality is no different). additionally, your characterization of judaism makes it sound like evangelical christianity, but are the jews not a people as well as a religion? would it not be more accurate to say that judaism is more about the relationship to the law than relationship to god? (yes, yes, i blaspheme)
finally, religious believers in my experience, understandably, make grand claims for the uniqueness of their tradition. as an atheist who’s never had a religious orientation i have to say: you’re not that special, it’s not just about you. most of the assertions people make about their own religion can be applied to other religions, they just don’t know about the lived experiences of other religionists some assertions, such as the fact that islam emphasizes the law (praxy) more than christian (as does orthodox judaism) are plain on the face of it. the idea that the individual relationship to the divine in christianity & judaism has some special quality might be true, but this is a subjective claim that’s hard to judge from exoteric cues, right?
— razib · Jan 15, 08:11 PM · #
razib’s last comment summarized: “God’s just not that into you.” — Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 08:21 PM · #
just a sidelight on terminology. samuel huntington famously used religions to map onto to some of his civilizations. i think that’s acceptable, religion matters to people, or they say it matters, people often claim religion as the sanction for all their behavior. so i think that the term ‘christendom’ is unfashionable, not wrong (though i do think that the difference between the world of orthodox christianity and catholic & protestant christianity is distinct enough that it isn’t precise enough anymore). but, just because someone claims that action 1 has sanction in religion A, does not entail that there is any real causal relationship. consider for example ‘hindu’ civilization. operationally that means indian/south asian civilization, the only major group of hindus outside of south asia not of the indian diaspora are those of bali and those who have converted to hinduism in java in the past 50 years (and a small community in vietnam). to a great extent, to be hindu is to be south asian, though to be south asian is not to be hindu (since around 30% of south asians are non-hindu).
so there is a major confound between hinduism and indianness, to the point where we have a hard time what is truly entailed or consequent from the beliefs and practices of hinduism as a religion that can be extracted out from the fact that it is an indian religion. just because we might label a civilization ‘hindu’ for convenience, does not mean that every aspect of that civilization is derivable to some theological axioms or sacred rites, in fact, these might be more influenced by the cultural matrix than the inverse. similarly, just because <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_divergence”>the great divergence</a> occurred in a western christian civilization does not mean that it was necessarily due to western christianity in some causal manner.
— razib · Jan 15, 08:43 PM · #
Alan — I see what you’re saying, and I agree, but I think Noah was making a much broader point, which is that Judaism and Christianity really don’t have all that much in common, and that the Judeo-Christian label is basically a politically convenient fabrication. I disagree with that. I also think this is an outstanding post, one which makes a series of great points, some of which (at least the way I see them) are out of sync with my understanding of some issues.
— PEG · Jan 15, 09:26 PM · #
I think that becasue the whole schism between jews and christians results from the life of Jesus, who was a jew that Christianity is very much entwined with Judaism. Also, how do jews account for none of the disciples or even Paul considering themselves anything but jews?
— BrianF · Jan 15, 09:28 PM · #
Also, how do jews account for none of the disciples or even Paul considering themselves anything but jews?
isn’t part of the issue that how christians view themselves in their relationship to judaism is out of sync with how jews view christians and their relationship to judaism? and this goes for jewish christians too. i have heard some christians argue that their religion is very pro-jewish, after all, it is the “completion” of judaism. i think jews would view that sort of assertion a bit differently ;-)
— razib · Jan 15, 09:38 PM · #
Also, Alan, about sophisticated anti-Semitism — I think you can be a very sophisticated person and hold very unsophisticated views. There have historically been very sophisticated defenses, or advocations of anti-Semitism, and sophisticated advocates, but to me that doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism isn’t, at its core, some kind of primal, irrational … thing … and everything else isn’t window dressing. (I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case either, although that’s certainly where my instincts would lead, but I haven’t thought about this enough to have a fully thought-through explanation. Anti-Semitism, or rather Christian anti-Semitism, frankly, is one of the things in this world that leaves me the most dismayed and silent.)
Although I agree with your point that it’s easy to forget today that there were some very educated, sophisticated, anti-Semites. And there are still some around today (and your point about the Euro lefty press is, to my shame, also true).
— PEG · Jan 15, 09:48 PM · #
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, Razib, at least as regards some aspects of religious uniqueness. Islam, for example, has an obsession with textuality and script which I think is striking and which really enabled some of the early Muslim mathematicians and scientists to pore through ancient texts and dig up scientifically useful stuff — you see that in the omnipresent display of calligraphy, in the use of a quill as a plectrum, and arguably even the Qu’ran itself builds on an aspect of Christianity that’s gotta drive anyone obsessed with texts nuts: that you only need one gospel — Christ’s, which would make the others sort of irrelevant — and that’s the one you don’t have, so you have an incentive to say the text is aborted. Similarly I don’t think any religion has anywhere near the obsession with (unwritten) language that “Hinduism” does: a glace through the Mahabhasya confirms that, and who else has God creating the meters right up front, or the need to invoke meter before a prayer?
Those two examples jump out at me because often in early commentary from Muslims in India I’m struck by the — dislike? — Muslims seem to’ve had for the natives’ lack of appreciation of their own written scholarship and records. Contrast with Sanksrit commentary, which is inserted confusingly right into the damn text because the commenters on the literature itself don’t seem to value keeping the literature intact on the page.
— Sanjay · Jan 15, 09:57 PM · #
sanjay, early islam frowned upon representational art of living forms. this is used to explain why calligraphy and architecture are such prominent islamic arts, since that’s where the energy went. i guess you’ making a causally inverted claim?
as a point of fact perhaps we should get some comprehension for how and why the muslims retrieved ancient texts. with the emergence of the abbassids the common use of greek as the lingua franca of the bureaucracy in the west disappeared (remember that the last of the church fathers lived under the ummayyads as a minister at court). the newly civilized muslims needed philosophy to make their religion more serious, and so you had to look to the greeks. they employed christians and sabians in the process, partly for reasons of language and partly because of the latter’s cultural preoccupation with ancient philosophy (sabians being the last of the classical pagans). but, islamic textuality was not universal. if it were not for the byzantines we would not have much of the humanistic production of the ancient world (e.g., the plays of the greeks). the muslims focused ‘practical works,’ applied arts (engineering) and philosophy. so it wasn’t about the text, it was about developing a language with which they could build an advanced theology. and the greeks are the only game in town in the west for that.
as for the muslim reaction to india, that says more about india than islam. the chinese buddhist pilgrims are used to sync pre-islamic indian chronologies. the chinese were and are just as textual (more so) than muslims. they have the analects, book of songs, commentaries by the scholars, etc., but they are not a people of the book in a religious way.
— razib · Jan 15, 10:07 PM · #
The relationship between Judaism and Christianity, as I see it, is very much like that between Christianity and Mormonism.
That is, Mormonism is as impossible to conceive of without Christianity and Christianity is without Judaism. Moreover, just as Christians look upon their faith as the logical fulfillment of Judaism, Mormons look upon their faith as the logical fulfillment of Christianity.
Meanwhile, the Jews look at Christians (just as Christians look at Mormons) and sniff, “My religion was just fine as it was, and didn’t need any ‘fulfillment,’ thank you very much. In any case, I don’t know WHAT the heck your faith is all about, but it sure doesn’t bear much resemblance to what I believe.” If a leading Mormon politician spoke of “our great Christ-Mormon heritage,” I think a lot of us Christians would feel uneasy, rather than flattered. I’d expect similar unease from many Jews with regard to the phrase “Judaeo-Christian heritage.” Even though it’s usually used with the best of intentions, the implication is that Christians and Jews are theologically and culturally on the same page. And, in spite of our commonalities, we’re not.
— astorian · Jan 15, 10:13 PM · #
yes. but let’s add some details. imagine that today mormonism was the dominant religion in the west. christianity was a demographic rump, marginalized, but allowed to exist because it give some voice to true religion, despite being garbled and a false christianity (which needed to be restored by mormonism). at this point mormons do not take input from chrisitans, rather, they are just talking to each other. christians need to take heed of mormonism, as that is the religion of the powers that be.
i think this is what happened with much of eastern christianity in the muslim world. obviously eastern christianity was an influence on islam. as i’ve said, the islamic style of prayer probably owes itself to particular egyptian monastic practices (also zoroastrian regularity, 3 times a day, which muslims trumped with 5). but after a particular point (say about 1000) christianity stopped having influence on islam, and could be ignored. it was demographically marginal.
that’s what i’m describing as the dynamic between judaism and christianity between 500 and 1800.
— razib · Jan 15, 10:20 PM · #
Razib’s points appear to cohere around the following claims: 1) religion has a far more functional and/or epiphenomenal relationship to extra-religious or non-religious culture and intellectual achievement than most religious people are willing to acknowledge. Therefore, 2) claims that a religion creates or nurtures distinctive cultural and political attitudes and practices are very dubious; and 3) especially in explicit comparisons with other religions, religious people frequently make at best non-demonstrable, and at worst demonstrably false claims about the uniqueness of their own religion’s paths of spiritual experience. The first two claims may be true in certain contexts, but opposite arguments could just as plausibly be made if the place of religion and its ‘others’ in each proposition were reversed, and this reversal is often a useful corrective in the more assertive precincts of secular thinking, where a broadly Durkheimian view of religion is often assumed (precincts which do not include this site, it should be said). The third assertion can certainly be true (one thinks of the awful caricatures of Judaism in a long tradition of Christian thought), but at a very immediate and perceptible level, exhortations and prohibitions for or against, say, “representational art of living forms” do orient spiritual experience in distinct directions in different religions.
— Matt · Jan 15, 10:55 PM · #
PEG, you’re right about sophistication.
I also just want to add that some of my best friends are Judeos.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 16, 02:36 AM · #
“representational art of living forms” do orient spiritual experience in distinct directions in different religions.
perhaps. but i tend to think architectural and calligraphic virtuosity are substitutable with the imagistic arousal that is correlated with rites in the presence of impressive representational art. IOW, the fMRI reading of christians in the hagia sophia as a church would probably be of the same quality as muslims in the hagia sophia as a mosque (which it was before ataturk).
— razib · Jan 16, 02:37 AM · #
This has been a fascinating debate, but while many have referenced in passing the historical foundations of the notion of Judeo-Christian civilization, I think the historical roots are worthy of a greater part of the debate. The idea came out of the desire during World War II (and the Holocaust) to read out of Western Civilization the vicious anti-Semites of Nazism and the lesser anti-Semitism that was rampant among the allies (including the America Firsters, Bund et al.). Jacques Maritain was one of the leading lights that argued for the addition of the Judeo to the age old phrase of Christian civilization. Prior to the inclusion of the Jews, it was pretty clear that Christian civilization (the greater Christendom) was the phrasing of most folks. All of these theological debates seem secondary to the fact that those opposing the deathless evil of anti-Semitism sought to find a language that brought the Jewish community within the bounds of those with an unalienable right to the own lives and not to be murdered by the Nazi regime.
— David M · Jan 16, 04:57 AM · #
As a sidenote, it is worth noting that there is a “zoroastro-indic” civilizational heritage insofar as the various commonalities between early Avestan and Vedic literature is concerned (consider, for example, Mitra as a common deity figure). This is old, of course, but the argument can be made that proto-indo-iranian zoroastrianism is a predecessor religion to both the abrahamic and vedic/indic religions.
— jackal · Jan 16, 08:36 AM · #
but the argument can be made that proto-indo-iranian zoroastrianism is a predecessor religion to both the abrahamic and vedic/indic religions.
well, obviously the abrahamic religions are strongly influenced by zoroastrianism, which as you note comes out of an indo-european matrix. but as for the indic religions, i am of the inclination to accept those who would claim that they are fundamentally more in keeping with the non-indo-european heritage of india. that is, the vedic religion was superseded by a synthetic faith whose basis had reverted back to the pre-aryan metaphysic. some hindu reformists like the arya samaj do want to “go back to the vedas,” but i don’t see that even these neo-hindu movements really stay true to the spirit of the indo-aryan religion (remember, the aryans were beef eaters).
— razib · Jan 16, 09:05 AM · #
Yeah, there certainly was a lot of the synthesis, but I suppose this all depends on what ‘staying true’ means. The core of most mainline contemporary Hindu theological groups lies in their particular vedic interpretation, even in the south. Obviously its not exactly whatever was practiced by the originators of the vedas back in 1000BC or so, but the centrality of one or more of the vedas, and a particular interpretation of it, at least in principle, is the theological core of most branches of “mainline hinduism” (if you’ll permit me to call it that). This was generally true theologically speaking, though the idea of the reform movements that arose (as I understand them) was to bring this much more into practice, as the way religion was lived was rather removed from the vedas given that access to them was exclusive to brahmins till the 18th-19th centuries.
Most contemporary Christians also rely on particular theological interpretations of ‘revealed’ texts, though obviously in a stronger fashion than the various hinduisms. In comparison to the Abrahamic faiths perhaps many more modern texts/intepretations have, in everyday practice, taken a more important role, but.. a lot of the stuff that’s still recited on a daily basis goes all the way back to the Vedas. (I guess one could even make a weak comparison between all this and the Talmud vs. the Torah in contemporary Jewish practice — the interpreters are, however, more numerous and less coherent in the case of Indic religion(s)..)
— jackal · Jan 16, 11:18 AM · #
Noah, There’s a lot here that I agree with, but also a lot to disagree with.
1) I don’t think the Parsees are really part of “Indian civilization”. Iranian religion had a tremendous amount of mutual influence on Judaism and, ultimately, Christianity (particularly through its influence on various Christian “heresies” and the reaction against them). It’s likely that a lot of Christian thinking about the devil, the war between good and evil, angels, and the afterlife is ultimately due to Persia. Their influence on the Hindu civilization of India was, however, marginal at best. (I say this as a fairly traditionalist Christian of Hindu ancestry, who has a great admiration for the Zoroastrian faith). 2) “Western civilization” is not a term that I like much, partly because there is so much division and diversity in worldviews within ‘the West’. Really, how much does a peasant in highland Peru or a steelworker in the Urals have with a computer programmer in Brussels? Very little. I incline more to Huntington’s conception that, at the very least, Orthodox civilization and Latin American civilization are seriously distinct from the civilization of North America and Western Europe. In general, Enlightenment liberalism (the value complex of secularism, individualism, capitalism and liberal democracy) is pretty thoroughly ingrained throughout North America and Western Europe. It isn’t nearly so ingrained in the Orthodox East or in the Catholic South, and is often seen as something foreign, threartening, and imperialistic. 3) Judaism and Christianity are, really, very different, and it annoys me when liberal Christians today try to elide the differences. In large part they developed in opposition to one another.
4) I also don’t like the phrasing that “Jesus was a Jew”. From my (Christian) perspective, that emphasizes his human nature at the expense of his divine nature. Properly speaking, he was God; he is the object of worship, nothing less. While he was a Jew by adoption, and probably one biologically through His mother, he certainly wasn’t a Jew in terms of what he believed to be true about the nature of God (that God is a trinity, and that He was the begotten son of the Father)- those propositions are blasphemous by Jewish standards, as I understand them. 5) The Old Testament isn’t, I think, viewed as the same kind of scripture by Christians and Jews. For Jews, it is self-sustaining, a description of God’s relationship with His people. For Christians, it has value because it prophecies Christ, not the other way around. Christ is the Logos, the Incarnate God, the central story: the Old Testament is simply prologue.
— Hector · Jan 18, 04:44 AM · #
Trinitarian Christians would take great offence at being excluded from the category of “strict monotheists”. Perhaps you meant “strict Unitarians”? The doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation may or may not be true, but if they are true, they in no way disqualify their adherents from “belief in only one God”. To blithely equate monotheism with unitarianism suggests that the writer doesn’t understand Trinitarian beliefs on their own terms.
— Rod Blaine · Jan 18, 09:43 PM · #
Re: but as for the indic religions, i am of the inclination to accept those who would claim that they are fundamentally more in keeping with the non-indo-european heritage of india.
We can say much the same about ancient European paganism: it was a fusion of both Indo-European and pre-Indoeuropean elements— although the substrates were of course very different between India and Europe.
Re: I incline more to Huntington’s conception that, at the very least, Orthodox civilization and Latin American civilization are seriously distinct from the civilization of North America and Western Europe. Latin America, yes: it’s civilization derives in no small part from native elements (plus some African influences in some areas) that are very alien to Europe. But Eastern Europe is still Europe, its civilization also rests on the three-pronged foundation of Grece, Rome and Christianity (with the adition of the “barbarian” Slavic elements, which are not in any major way too greatly different from the Germannic elements found further west). The isolation of Russia from Europe during the Mongol era does give Russia a different spin in some ways (but the same can be said of Iberia during its Moorish period), but Russian history is otherwise quite parallel to the history of the rest of Europe: the coalescence of a nation state in the 15th and 16th century, imperial growth, absolutism, “benevolent despotism”, reaction and revolution, totalitarianism. Yes, there is a sub-civilizational split between east and west in Europe, but there’s also one between the Romance/Catholic South and the Germannic/Protestant North— and between Britain with its overseas children and the Continent. Re: I also don’t like the phrasing that “Jesus was a Jew”. From my (Christian) perspective, that emphasizes his human nature at the expense of his divine nature. It’s no worse than saying “Jesus was male” or “Jesus spoke Aramaic”. I can’t see why a Jewish Jesus is any more problematic than a male Jesus. The truth of the Incarnation is that God became Man — and not just Man in some vague Gnostic/Platonic sense, but a specific man in a specific time and place with all the localities that that requires.
Re: he certainly wasn’t a Jew in terms of what he believed to be true about the nature of God At that time in Judaism there was no little diversity of opinion on matters theological. The narrowing of the possible in Judaism belongs to the later rabbinical era, when in fact the hammering out of “official” Judaism was undertaken partially in reaction to and rejection of Christian claims.
— JonF · Jan 20, 03:46 AM · #
Re: At that time in Judaism there was no little diversity of opinion on matters theological. Yes. But there were limits, and one of those limits was a strict monotheism, with no division into “Persons”. The Jews did not even want God to be represented so I find it hard to believe they were OK with him incarnating Himself. One of the arguments for the divinity of Christ is that the idea of incarnation was so blasphemous to Judaism that no pious Jew would have claimed to be God unless he actually was God (or else a particularly cynical megalomaniac, which Jesus wasn’t.) By contrast, there’s nothing scandalous about the idea of incarantion to Hindus, and by the same token there are plenty of people who claim to be ‘godmen’ in India today.
As for your point about Orthodoxy, yes of course Orthodoxy has roots in the same things that the West does. However, the Orthodox (and the Latin Americans) have interpreted and developed those elements in different ways. There are individualistic, liberal, rationalist strains within Christian civilization as well as more collectivistic, mystical strains. The West has emphasized the former side, while Orthodoxy and Latin America have emphasized the later. Neither is a “truer” heir of Greece, Rome and Judaea than the other, but they are quite definitely different. Russia and its satellites aren’t a defective copy of the West, it’s its own distinct civilization which has as much to teach the West as vice versa.
— Hector · Jan 20, 05:34 PM · #
Re: But there were limits, and one of those limits was a strict monotheism, with no division into “Persons”. The Jews did not even want God to be represented so I find it hard to believe they were OK with him incarnating Himself.
Actually, if you read the Old Testament there are various passages (notably in Genesis) where God appears in bodily/material form. Again, I think you are reading later Judaic strictures back into antiquity. Christianity emerged out of Judaism, the early Apostles were all Jews, as were large numbers of the first converts. Core Christian beliefs, including the Incarnation and the Trinity, could not have been so far removed from Judaism as to make that impossible. The Holy Spirit is actually spoken of in Essene texts, and there was also a sense that the Messiah would be divine — hence the charge that Jesus was blaspheming by claiming to be the Messiah, the logic being that he wasn’t (that was the starting premise) so by claiming falsely to be, he was impersonating God.
Re: However, the Orthodox (and the Latin Americans) have interpreted and developed those elements in different ways.
My point about the Latin Americans is that they incorporate a huge alien element (Native American civilization) so cannot be seen as simply European. That’s not true of Eastern Europe: The Slavs were no more alien than the Germannic barbarians; both were Indoeuropeans with a common ancestry and culture with the pre-Christian Kelts, Italians, Greeks, Illyrians and Thracians. Yes, there’s a cultural fault between east and West in Europe, but it doesn’t run all the way to the core of the Earth. It’s about as deep as the cultural fault between Germans and Latins, or between the British and the Continental folk. Or for that matter, in another civilzation, the fault between Arabs, Persians and Turks in the Middle East. By the way I don’t like the designation “West” at all; I prefer “European” (though that’s geographically awkward since it includes the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). There’s no unified “West”, but there is a European civilzation, born of the Indoeuropean tribes (though we allow the Uralic and Basque folk to be part of it too), heir to Greece and Rome, schooled by Christianity. It has four divisions: the South, the East, the North, and the Britannic. In term of history by the way the fault between North and South in Europe has bred far, far more conflict than the division between East and West ever did.
— JonF · Jan 21, 01:06 AM · #
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Tell Me, Mr. Gandhi, What Do You Think Of Western Civilization? | Culture | The American Scene
Filed under: Culture Tell Me, Mr. Gandhi, What Do You Think Of Western Civilization? As a fellow objector to the term, “Judeo-Christian,” I’m inclined to take Razib’s side in his dialogue with Ross Douthat. But I’m not sure “Judeo-Islamic” makes any more sense.
Christianity is, from the outside, a “strong misreading” of Judaism (and, from the inside, it’s Judaism that is a weak misreading of Israelite religion); Islam looks, from the outside, rather like an imitation of Judaism (and, from the inside, it’s Judaism which is a degenerate form of Islam). From a Christian perspective, what Ross says – that the common scripture creates more fruitful grounds for dialogue between Christians and Jews than between Muslims and Jews – might seem sensible. But from a Jewish perspective, I’m not sure that’s the case. It’s arguably easier to dialogue with someone who’s reading a different book in the same way than with someone who’s reading the same book in a very different (and incompatible) way. Another way to put it: Christians need to have a relationship of some kind with Judaism (if not with Jews), but Muslims basically don’t. But why should that make relations between Christians and Jews (or between Christianity and Judaism, if you prefer) more fruitful as opposed to more fraught? After all, Judaism doesn’t need a relationship with Christianity. How do lopsided relationships like that usually work out?
I agree with Ross that the term, “Judeo-Christian” is a way of “baptizing” Jews into America’s overwhelmingly Christian culture – and that’s exactly why I don’t like it. I also don’t like it because I suspect it’s a way of kashering an intellectual attempt to Christianize the Enlightenment. To argue that modern liberal democracy is an outgrowth of Christianity – and is ultimately parasitic on a living Christian community – well, that might be taken more amiss than to argue that it’s an outgrowth of “Judeo-Christian” tradition, whatever that is.
But Razib’s assertion that Judaism was, for most of its history “not part of Western civilization” is, I think, inadequate. If there is an Indian civilization, the Parsis are part of it, are they not? The only way to take the Jews of Europe out of the story of Western civilization is by limiting yourself to the times and places where the Jewish community was numerically insignificant – that is to say, in Ashkenaz in the Dark Ages.
Moreover, what is this “Western Civilization” of which you speak as if it were an unbroken chain from Athens to Los Angeles? One of the peculiarities of Western civilization (as against, for example, Chinese civilization – that’s my impression, anyway) is the extreme porousness of its boundaries. Western civilization famously has its roots in Athens and Jerusalem, but Western civilization also has roots among the Germanic barbarians of the north, from whence we get many of our major languages and cherished political traditions (trial by jury, for example). And modern Western civilization as it actually exists has some substantial Jewish roots (Freud, Kafka, Einstein, Rothschild, all that). And Judaism as it actually exists in the West is the product of the Enlightenment – even Orthodoxy as it actually exists is such a product, unavoidably so. The ultra-Orthodox world may be so predominantly as a reaction (much like fundamentalist religious movements outside the West), but modern Orthodoxy is a very self-conscious attempt to recast traditional Judaism in terms that would make sense in a Western philosophical context. I don’t think that there is any actual tradition to provide content to the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” – but you could well make the argument that the West as it exists is a “Judeo-Christian civilization” simply because the scale of Jewish contributions to that civilization ought to be recognized (rather as the scale of African contributions ought to be recognized when we talk about the character of American civilization).
To some extent, the same can be said of the Islamic world – but only to some extent. If Goitein is right (and I’m in no position to dispute with giants like him), mature (that is to say, medieval) Rabbinic Judaism owes as much to Islam as classical Islam owes to early Rabbinic Judaism. (Note, for example, that while the Talmud plainly is a record of argument about arguments – Amora’im elaborating on the debates of the Tanna’im – far removed from Mosaic times, it is treated by the tradition as if it were something akin to the hadith – a record that ultimately traces itself back to sayings of the founding prophet of the faith.) But I’m not sure that after the period of earliest origins Islam took all that much from Judaism. Nor was there any theological reason for it to pay Judaism any mind until the emergence of Zionism forced the question. So the idea of a “Judeo-Islamic” tradition or civilization is rather a stretch.
If the goal is to do a taxonomy, you could group Jews and Christians together as common descendants of Israelite religion; you could group Jews, Muslims and classical Unitarians together as strict monotheists; you could group Jews, Hindus and Confucians together as ethno-religious systems; you could group Jews and Parsis together as oddball religious minorities . . . Each of those divisions makes sense for a specific purpose. The purpose of asserting a “Judeo-Christian” tradition, being political, probably suggests limited utility for analytical purposes.
great post as usual noah.
1) a muslim individual at talkislam.info suggests ross is misrepresenting islam and its relationship to judaism. i really don’t know enough about islam and how it views jews from a muslim perspective (not being muslim, and my non-arab muslim background having 0 interest in jews) aside from that they’re a people of the book, so formally recognized and tolerated. on problem is that ideally someone would know judaism, christian and islam well, but very few people do (usually individuals know one well, for obvious reasons).
2) i don’t think parsis were contributors to indian civilization either. in fact, they were even more marginal than jews. they were numerically trivial, and hand changed many of their folkways to match their gujerati neighbors (language and food). i don’t think syrian orthodox christians were contributors to indian civilization. muslims were contributors to indian civilization, arguably influence particular bhakti devotional sects and so forth, though indian islam and hinduism remain very distinct (sikhism is some way toward synthesizing aspects of both). like jews in the west, the parsi prominence in indian civilization in a recent phenomenon. it is a function of the particular relationship of the parsis to the new british raj, and their particular comparative advantages as a middleman minority. of course, parsis were critical in indian nationalism and politics. jinnah married a parsi, as did nehru’s daughter. but there is no zoroastro-indic civilizational heritage. parsis just lived in india and were tolerated. and like jews, they internalized aspects of the majority culture so that they were transformed (e.g., parsis are way more fixated on the idea than zoroastrianism is the ethnic iranian religion than zoroastrians from iran proper are, from what i understand, probably a form of caste consciousness which naturally evolved in india).
in sum, if you are talking about the cultural streams which formed the indian outlook from time immemorial, there were the pre-islamic ones (synthesis of aryan, dravidian, hindu, buddhist etc.) which became “hindu” after islam, and the islamic ones, which was influenced by, and was an influence upon, hinduism. christian and zoroastrian indians are affected by this too. jews in the west are influenced by christianity in the same way.
3) i don’t think liberalism necessarily is contingent upon christianity, but christianity was the religion of the west for most of the past 2,000 years. if we are going to use a religious term to define the civilization, i would use christian, whether we of the west are christian or not (i’m an atheist, but my background is muslim, and in the near past hindu as well, but i identify with the post-christian west). if we are not going to use a religious label, then you don’t need to label it as christian.
4) all correct that it is somewhat a folly to imagine a cultural phylogeny that is similar to that of genetics because of the ubiquity of horizontal transfer. but if one had to pick between three cladograms with christian, islam and judaism as the notes:
would christianity be the outgroup?
would judaism be the outgroup?
would islam be the outgroup?
would the relationships be unclear?
it depends on the criterion you use. if you emphasize evangelical orientation judaism is the outgroup, obviously. as the unitarians say, the question can sometimes be the answer :)
— razib · Jan 15, 05:29 AM · #
p.s. as an analog with what i’m talking about in “protestantizing judaism” (e.g., reform), both parsis and syrian orthodox christians in india have “indianized” themselves in some ways (though i know that many of the christians have kerala have started becoming “more christian” under the influence of world wide christianity). so have many muslims, though as i said the muslim-indian relationship has been more of a two way street.
— razib · Jan 15, 06:33 AM · #
Many assessments of the affinities, or lack thereof, between Judaism and Christianity depend in part upon (crudely speaking) the ambient social and political environment in which the assessment is made, and the dimensions of Judaism and Christianity that receive preeminent emphasis in that environment. Buber and Rosenzweig, for example, of course prefer Judaism to Christianity, but present Christianity as a kind of second-best, universalizing religious option for Gentiles that reveals a loving personal God closely connected to Judaism. During the Middle Ages, however (esp. among Sephardim), Islam was considered closer to Judaism than Christianity by many Jews, on the grounds that Christianity was not sufficiently monotheistic. Since it was in part a motivation for the post by Noah, it’s worth mentioning that I would be very chary of thinking about the Enlightenment as constituting a simple break with Christianity, or something that has an only accidental relation to Christian Europe. Jonathan Israel has made a heroic effort to make the case that the Enlightenment sprung from Spinoza’s (admittedly extraordinary) intellect like Athena from Zeus’ head, but it stretches plausibility in several directions. If one identifies the Enlightenment in contemporary shorthand with religious toleration, government by consent of the governed, scientific inquiry, technological innovation, and mass literacy and basic education, it is very difficult to argue that these emerged as viable and widespread practices independently from or simply against Christian Europe. For primarily Scriptural and to a lesser extent Augustinian reasons, the split between sacred and secular power emerges in Christianity much more broadly and forcefully than it did the ancient world or in Islam (hence the persistent tensions between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy in the late Middle Ages, an epoch in which “secular” begins to mean something with a clear ancestral resemblance to what we mean by the term). The early arguments on behalf of religious toleration, from Cromwell to Locke, are filled with Gospel references, and popular sovereignty, from the defense of the rights of the “smallest he” in England by Independents (re: Congregationalists) at the Putney Debates to George III’s reference to the American Revolutionary War as a “Presbyterian Rebellion” testify to the robust connections between the appeal of self-government and the ecclesiology of dissenting Protestant Churches. The Protestant and Catholic Reformations gave an enormous stimulus to primary and secondary education over large parts of Europe, to offer better catechetical instruction amidst religious controversy and (esp. in Protestant areas), unfiltered access to the Bible. “The Enlightenment as world-historical break” thesis usually turns to science above all, but even there the evidence is very mixed. The Scientific Revolution runs its course before the eighteenth-century Enlightenment begins. Its founding thinkers are not necessarily estranged from Christianity personally or theoretically. Francis Bacon justified his own investigations as a means for invention oriented towards the relief of man’s estate, rooted in Christian charity; Descartes was extremely popular and often popularized by French Catholics, just as Anglicans enthused about and popularized the discoveries of Newton. Many of the important figures of the scientific revolution were themselves interested in the laws of nature as a way of thinking with a God of supreme rationality, a divine reason in which human reason could imperfectly participate (Newton certainly thought in these terms, and this notion of God as perfect rationality clearly owes a debt to Platonist Christians like Boethius, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc.). This doesn’t even touch upon the subject of Christian theology’s relation to the beginnings of modern science via late medieval developments like nominalism, etc. (Amos Funkenstein wrote the great book on this subject— and it’s still worth reading).
— Matt · Jan 15, 07:00 AM · #
If one identifies the Enlightenment in contemporary shorthand with religious toleration, government by consent of the governed, scientific inquiry, technological innovation, and mass literacy and basic education, it is very difficult to argue that these emerged as viable and widespread practices independently from or simply against Christian Europe.
let’s not talk in a socio-historical vacuum, shall we? religious toleration, consent of the governed, technological innovation, and mass literacy literacy and basic education are all found outside of christendom. the last two in china & japan at various times. the first in india and china and japan (see the argument made by the mongol khan to the christian missionary in the 13th century in favor of religious toleration). scientific inquiry is a separate and distinction issue, and you can make the argument of its necessary contingency upon christianity because i believe that science as such emerged only in one society, western europe in the 17th century, and that society was christian. i am personally skeptical that christianity is a necessary condition for the emergence of science, but that is a different argument. and for the record, i don’t think that the “enlightenment” is really contingent on christianity either in a necessary way. but, it is a fact that the enlightenment evolved out of a christian culture, and some figures in the enlightenment were believing christians. so i do not see it as necessarily an anti-christian movement either, or seeded by the rediscovery of classical paganism during the renaissance in a way that can be extracted out of its historical matrix.
— razib · Jan 15, 07:11 AM · #
I have to say I’m quite surprized by your objection to the “Judeo-Christian” term. It has always seemed to me that Judaism and Christianity have more in common than any other set of two religions (setting aside syncretic Asia, which happily mashes together their various religious traditions).
It seems to me that they are the only two religions that put such an emphasis on the individual, and on a positive decision by the individual to put their trust and faith in God. One of the reasons why I have such an almost boundless admiration for orthodox Judaism is because of the dedication it demands in adherence to the mitzvot — in any other religion adherence to such an onerous set of rules leaves me cold, but the reason why it fills me with awe in Judaism is because the rules are the expression of the individual Jew’s acceptance of and will to be closer to God. (I realize I’m likely grossly simplifying and/or misunderstanding, but I do think this is broadly correct.) This is not the same thing as islam, the submission which is demanded of the Muslim follower, and it is much closer of the individual conversion which is central to the Christian experience. When God asks Abraham for his son, he doesn’t bully him into giving him up — he asks for Abraham’s unconditional, but free-willing trust. It is this key reliance on the individual which, in my view, Judaism and Christianity are the only religions to truly share (at least to such an extent) and which can be rightly put at the root of Western Civilization, Enlightenment and all. (After all, if — to philosophize with a hatchet — the fathers of the Enlightenment are Descartes and Spinoza, how can it not be properly called “Judeo-Christian”?) When you write “you could well make the argument that the West as it exists is a “Judeo-Christian civilization” simply because the scale of Jewish contributions to that civilization ought to be recognized (rather as the scale of African contributions ought to be recognized when we talk about the character of American civilization)”, I think that’s right, but I also think there is a lot more to it.
— PEG · Jan 15, 11:45 AM · #
PEG, I think Noah’s point — one of his points in this outstanding post — is that it’s precisely all that Judaism and Christianity have in common that makes healthy relations so difficult. It’s the fact that Christians take the Hebrew Bible as their own scripture, and consider it God’s Word just as fully as the New Testament, that commits us to an ongoing and strenuous encounter with Judaism. Everything would have been easier if we had done what Islam did (and what the early Christian heretic Marcion wanted to do) and simply dismiss the Hebrew Bible as human words with no divine sanction. It’s a refusal to come to grips with this necessary encounter with an ongoing Judaism that has produced a great deal of Christian anti-Semitism: from one Christian point of view — a narrow and hateful, but not an uncommon, one — every Jew is a living testimony to the possibility that we’ve interpreted our Scriptures wrongly. So persecuting them to death or walling them up in ghettos are ways to keep those dark possibilities out of sight and out of mind.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 02:28 PM · #
Razib, your points are generally well-taken. I was responding to Noah’s remark objecting to the argument that liberal democracy, et. al., grows out of Christianity and has some (not unqualified, but some) positive ongoing relation to it. While I obviously don’t think it’s a coincidence that a variety of constituting, interrelated and enduring practices of modernity (with universalist aspirations) emerge in Christian Europe, it’s certainly not my argument that these discrete practices have never been considered or successfully deployed in East Asia and elsewhere, any more than I would make the obviously absurd argument that Europe has practiced them with unalloyed success during or since the Enlightenment. And yes, Europe’s non-Christian heritage (Greek, Roman, to a lesser extent Celtic, etc.) and thinkers (e.g., Spinoza) are also an important part of, as it were, modernity’s prehistory.
— Matt · Jan 15, 02:59 PM · #
Alan, are you suggesting that anti-Semitism is born of theological angst and doubt among Christians? That suggests a greater deal of sophistication among anti-Semites than I would like to credit. Anti-Semitism seems to me a lot cruder; a minority out-group is perceived to have advantages that the majority in-group does not, and this is deemed unfair and intolerable. It’s tribal vanity and jealousy, not a dispute over interpretations of the Torah, and it sullies those who think seriously about the differences and similarities between Judaism and Christianity to suggest it.
— Blar · Jan 15, 05:04 PM · #
This is tangential to what Noah is talking about but I do find it useful, often, to talk about the “Abrahamic” or what-have-you faith and sort of lump Judaism, Christianity, and Islam together into one religion (as well as I suppose Baha’i and Mormons and the like). I don’t think that’s unjustified, either: it’s not like there are hard-and-fast rules about what makes a difference between two systems of belief minor enough that we consider them different sects of the same religion, versus different religions. And the fact is that the gulf between that “Abrahamic” religion and (say) “Hinduism” is vast. You look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam from that perspective and you say, look, they’ve got the same cosmology, the same grand structure of the universe with God/Satan/people with their immortal souls, the same concept of what morality is for and what it does (and very similar moral structures), and even overlapping mythologies. I’ve generally felt that if (say) we dug up in Mayan ruins three so similar religions we’d just go ahead and call them all sectarian versions of the same thing.
And that kind of glossing over differences — or at least recognizing that they are minor against similarities — isn’t a bad starting point for that “Western Civilization” idea — though I’d be much more likely to do that sort of thing based on something like musical scales, personally.
— Sanjay · Jan 15, 06:02 PM · #
Blar, I’m not sure I totally understand your comment (especially the last sentence, where the “its” confuse me), but:
1) Anti-Semitism, sad to say, is not especially unsophisticated. As any reader of left-wing British (and more generally European) magazines can tell you, it’s often professed by highly educated people. And some of the most prominent and influential figures in Christian history have been horrifically anti-Semitic (St. Jerome, Martin Luther). Anti-Semitism would not have been such a powerful force in history if had only been professed by dimwits. (This does not mean that I have a good explanation for why many smart and well-educated people are prone to anti-Semitism.)
2) Historically, the economic success of European Jews is at least in part a result of institutionalized anti-Semitism. Many European Jews went into trade and banking because other professions (and in many cases land-ownership) were denied them. Vicious anti-Semitism long predates the familiar caricatures of the greedy Jewish moneylender.
3) There is plenty of evidence that early Christians — most of whom were Jews themselves, remember — were often consumed by anger at those who would not accept that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel. (Early rabbinical commentary on Christians is illuminating in this regard too.) So the core disputes were biblical and theological before they could have been “tribal,” because they went on among people in the same “tribe.” — Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 06:57 PM · #
It is this key reliance on the individual which, in my view, Judaism and Christianity are the only religions to truly share (at least to such an extent) and which can be rightly put at the root of Western Civilization, Enlightenment and all.
i think most muslims would totally disagree with this. there are bhakti sects of hinduism, and pure land buddhism, which are no different (one of the “sellable” points of islam is that it is a priestless religion where no one mediates between god & the individual-reality is no different). additionally, your characterization of judaism makes it sound like evangelical christianity, but are the jews not a people as well as a religion? would it not be more accurate to say that judaism is more about the relationship to the law than relationship to god? (yes, yes, i blaspheme)
finally, religious believers in my experience, understandably, make grand claims for the uniqueness of their tradition. as an atheist who’s never had a religious orientation i have to say: you’re not that special, it’s not just about you. most of the assertions people make about their own religion can be applied to other religions, they just don’t know about the lived experiences of other religionists some assertions, such as the fact that islam emphasizes the law (praxy) more than christian (as does orthodox judaism) are plain on the face of it. the idea that the individual relationship to the divine in christianity & judaism has some special quality might be true, but this is a subjective claim that’s hard to judge from exoteric cues, right?
— razib · Jan 15, 08:11 PM · #
razib’s last comment summarized: “God’s just not that into you.” — Alan Jacobs · Jan 15, 08:21 PM · #
just a sidelight on terminology. samuel huntington famously used religions to map onto to some of his civilizations. i think that’s acceptable, religion matters to people, or they say it matters, people often claim religion as the sanction for all their behavior. so i think that the term ‘christendom’ is unfashionable, not wrong (though i do think that the difference between the world of orthodox christianity and catholic & protestant christianity i
s distinct enough that it isn’t precise enough anymore). but, just because someone claims that action 1 has sanction in religion A, does not entail that there is any real causal relationship. consider for example ‘hindu’ civilization. operationally that means indian/south asian civilization, the only major group of hindus outside of south asia not of the indian diaspora are those of bali and those who have converted to hinduism in java in the past 50 years (and a small community in vietnam). to a great extent, to be hindu is to be south asian, though to be south asian is not to be hindu (since around 30% of south asians are non-hindu).
so there is a major confound between hinduism and indianness, to the point where we have a hard time what is truly entailed or consequent from the beliefs and practices of hinduism as a religion that can be extracted out from the fact that it is an indian religion. just because we might label a civilization ‘hindu’ for convenience, does not mean that every aspect of that civilization is derivable to some theological axioms or sacred rites, in fact, these might be more influenced by the cultural matrix than the inverse. similarly, just because <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_divergence”>the great divergence</a> occurred in a western christian civilization does not mean that it was necessarily due to western christianity in some causal manner.
— razib · Jan 15, 08:43 PM · #
Alan — I see what you’re saying, and I agree, but I think Noah was making a much broader point, which is that Judaism and Christianity really don’t have all that much in common, and that the Judeo-Christian label is basically a politically convenient fabrication. I disagree with that. I also think this is an outstanding post, one which makes a series of great points, some of which (at least the way I see them) are out of sync with my understanding of some issues.
— PEG · Jan 15, 09:26 PM · #
I think that becasue the whole schism between jews and christians results from the life of Jesus, who was a jew that Christianity is very much entwined with Judaism. Also, how do jews account for none of the disciples or even Paul considering themselves anything but jews?
— BrianF · Jan 15, 09:28 PM · #
Also, how do jews account for none of the disciples or even Paul considering themselves anything but jews?
isn’t part of the issue that how christians view themselves in their relationship to judaism is out of sync with how jews view christians and their relationship to judaism? and this goes for jewish christians too. i have heard some christians argue that their religion is very pro-jewish, after all, it is the “completion” of judaism. i think jews would view that sort of assertion a bit differently ;-)
— razib · Jan 15, 09:38 PM · #
Also, Alan, about sophisticated anti-Semitism — I think you can be a very sophisticated person and hold very unsophisticated views. There have historically been very sophisticated defenses, or advocations of anti-Semitism, and sophisticated advocates, but to me that doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism isn’t, at its core, some kind of primal, irrational … thing … and everything else isn’t window dressing. (I’m not saying that’s necessarily the case either, although that’s certainly where my instincts would lead, but I haven’t thought about this enough to have a fully thought-through explanation. Anti-Semitism, or rather Christian anti-Semitism, frankly, is one of the things in this world that leaves me the most dismayed and silent.)
Although I agree with your point that it’s easy to forget today that there were some very educated, sophisticated, anti-Semites. And there are still some around today (and your point about the Euro lefty press is, to my shame, also true).
— PEG · Jan 15, 09:48 PM · #
I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, Razib, at least as regards some aspects of religious uniqueness. Islam, for example, has an obsession with textuality and script which I think is striking and which really enabled some of the early Muslim mathematicians and scientists to pore through ancient texts and dig up scientifically useful stuff — you see that in the omnipresent display of calligraphy, in the use of a quill as a plectrum, and arguably even the Qu’ran itself builds on an aspect of Christianity that’s gotta drive anyone obsessed with texts nuts: that you only need one gospel — Christ’s, which would make the others sort of irrelevant — and that’s the one you don’t have, so you have an incentive to say the text is aborted. Similarly I don’t think any religion has anywhere near the obsession with (unwritten) language that “Hinduism” does: a glace through the Mahabhasya confirms that, and who else has God creating the meters right up front, or the need to invoke meter before a prayer?
Those two examples jump out at me because often in early commentary from Muslims in India I’m struck by the — dislike? — Muslims seem to’ve had for the natives’ lack of appreciation of their own written scholarship and records. Contrast with Sanksrit commentary, which is inserted confusingly right into the damn text because the commenters on the literature itself don’t seem to value keeping the literature intact on the page.
— Sanjay · Jan 15, 09:57 PM · #
sanjay, early islam frowned upon representational art of living forms. this is used to explain why calligraphy and architecture are such prominent islamic arts, since that’s where the energy went. i guess you’ making a causally inverted claim?
as a point of fact perhaps we should get some comprehension for how and why the muslims retrieved ancient texts. with the emergence of the abbassids the common use of greek as the lingua franca of the bureaucracy in the west disappeared (remember that the last of the church fathers lived under the ummayyads as a minister at court). the newly civilized muslims needed philosophy to make their religion more serious, and so you had to look to the greeks. they employed christians and sabians in the process, partly for reasons of language and partly because of the latter’s cultural preoccupation with ancient philosophy (sabians being the last of the classical pagans). but, islamic textuality was not universal. if it were not for the byzantines we would not have much of the humanistic production of the ancient world (e.g., the plays of the greeks). the muslims focused ‘practical works,’ applied arts (engineering) and philosophy. so it wasn’t about the text, it was about developing a language with which they could build an advanced theology. and the greeks are the only game in town in the west for that.
as for the muslim reaction to india, that says more about india than islam. the chinese buddhist pilgrims are used to sync pre-islamic indian chronologies. the chinese were and are just as textual (more so) than muslims. they have the analects, book of songs, commentaries by the scholars, etc., but they are not a people of the book in a religious way.
— razib · Jan 15, 10:07 PM · #
The relationship between Judaism and Christianity, as I see it, is very much like that between Christianity and Mormonism.
That is, Mormonism is as impossible to conceive of without Christianity and Christianity is without Judaism. Moreover, just as Christians look upon their faith as the logical fulfillment of Judaism, Mormons look upon their faith as the logical fulfillment of Christianity.
Meanwhile, the Jews look at Christians (just as Christians look at Mormons) and sniff, “My religion was just fine as it was, and didn’t need any ‘fulfillment,’ thank you very much. In any case, I don’t know WHAT the heck your faith is all about, but it sure doesn’t bear much resemblance to what I believe.” If a leading Mormon politician spoke of “our great Christ-Mormon heritage,” I think a lot of us Christians would feel uneasy, rather than flattered. I’d expect similar unease from many Jews with regard to the phrase “Judaeo-Christian heritage.” Even though it’s usually used with the best of intentions, the implication is that Christians and Jews are theologically and culturally on the same page. And, in spite of our commonalities, we’re not.
— astorian · Jan 15, 10:13 PM · #
yes. but let’s add some details. imagine that today mormonism was the dominant religion in the west. christianity was a demographic rump, marginalized, but allowed to exist because it give some voice to true religion, despite being garbled and a false christianity (which needed to be restored by mormonism). at this point mormons do not take input from chrisitans, rather, they are just talking to each other. christians need to take heed of mormonism, as that is the religion of the powers that be.
i think this is what happened with much of eastern christianity in the muslim world. obviously eastern christianity was an influence on islam. as i’ve said, the islamic style of prayer probably owes itself to particular egyptian monastic practices (also zoroastrian regularity, 3 times a day, which muslims trumped with 5). but after a particular point (say about 1000) christianity stopped having influence on islam, and could be ignored. it was demographically marginal.
that’s what i’m describing as the dynamic between judaism and christianity between 500 and 1800.
— razib · Jan 15, 10:20 PM · #
Razib’s points appear to cohere around the following claims: 1) religion has a far more functional and/or epiphenomenal relationship to extra-religious or non-religious culture and intellectual achievement than most religious people are willing to acknowledge. Therefore, 2) claims that a religion creates or nurtures distinctive cultural and political attitudes and practices are very dubious; and 3) especially in explicit comparisons with other religions, religious people frequently make at best non-demonstrable, and at worst demonstrably false claims about the uniqueness of their own religion’s paths of spiritual experience. The first two claims may be true in certain contexts, but opposite arguments could just as plausibly be made if the place of religion and its ‘others’ in each proposition were reversed, and this reversal is often a useful corrective in the more assertive precincts of secular thinking, where a broadly Durkheimian view of religion is often assumed (precincts which do not include this site, it should be said). The third assertion can certainly be true (one thinks of the awful caricatures of Judaism in a long tradition of Christian thought), but at a very immediate and perceptible level, exhortations and prohibitions for or against, say, “representational art of living forms” do orient spiritual experience in distinct directions in different religions.
— Matt · Jan 15, 10:55 PM · #
PEG, you’re right about sophistication.
I also just want to add that some of my best friends are Judeos.
— Alan Jacobs · Jan 16, 02:36 AM · #
“representational art of living forms” do orient spiritual experience in distinct directions in different religions.
perhaps. but i tend to think architectural and calligraphic virtuosity are substitutable with the imagistic arousal that is correlated with rites in the presence of impressive representational art. IOW, the fMRI reading of christians in the hagia sophia as a church would probably be of the same quality as muslims in the hagia sophia as a mosque (which it was before ataturk).
— razib · Jan 16, 02:37 AM · #
This has been a fascinating debate, but while many have referenced in passing the historical foundations of the notion of Judeo-Christian civilization, I think the historical roots are worthy of a greater part of the debate. The idea came out of the desire during World War II (and the Holocaust) to read out of Western Civilization the vicious anti-Semites of Nazism and the lesser anti-Semitism that was rampant among the allies (including the America Firsters, Bund et al.). Jacques Maritain was one of the leading lights that argued for the addition of the Judeo to the age old phrase of Christian civilization. Prior to the inclusion of the Jews, it was pretty clear that Christian civilization (the greater Christendom) was the phrasing of most folks. All of these theological debates seem secondary to the fact that those opposing the deathless evil of anti-Semitism sought to find a language that brought the Jewish community within the bounds of those with an unalienable right to the own lives and not to be murdered by the Nazi regime.
— David M · Jan 16, 04:57 AM · #
As a sidenote, it is worth noting that there is a “zoroastro-indic” civilizational heritage insofar as the various commonalities between early Avestan and Vedic literature is concerned (consider, for example, Mitra as a common deity figure). This is old, of course, but the argument can be made that proto-indo-iranian zoroastrianism is a predecessor religion to both the abrahamic and vedic/indic religions.
— jackal · Jan 16, 08:36 AM · #
but the argument can be made that proto-indo-iranian zoroastrianism is a predecessor religion to both the abrahamic and vedic/indic religions.
well, obviously the abrahamic religions are strongly influenced by zoroastrianism, which as you note comes out of an indo-european matrix. but as for the indic religions, i am of the inclination to accept those who would claim that they are fundamentally more in keeping with the non-indo-european heritage of india. that is, the vedic religion was superseded by a synthetic faith whose basis had reverted back to the pre-aryan metaphysic. some hindu reformists like the arya samaj do want to “go back to the vedas,” but i don’t see that even these neo-hindu movements really stay true to the spirit of the indo-aryan religion (remember, the aryans were beef eaters).
— razib · Jan 16, 09:05 AM · #
Yeah, there certainly was a lot of the synthesis, but I suppose this all depends on what ‘staying true’ means. The core of most mainline contemporary Hindu theological groups lies in their particular vedic interpretation, even in the south. Obviously its not exactly whatever was practiced by the originators of the vedas back in 1000BC or so, but the centrality of one or more of the vedas, and a particular interpretation of it, at least in principle, is the theological core of most branches of “mainline hinduism” (if you’ll permit me to call it that). This was generally true theologically speaking, though the idea of the reform movements that arose (as I understand them) was to bring this much more into practice, as the way religion was lived was rather removed from the vedas given that access to them was exclusive to brahmins till the 18th-19th centuries.
Most contemporary Christians also rely on particular theological interpretations of ‘revealed’ texts, though obviously in a stronger fashion than the various hinduisms. In comparison to the Abrahamic faiths perhaps many more modern texts/intepretations have, in everyday practice, taken a more important role, but.. a lot of the stuff that’s still recited on a daily basis goes all the way back to the Vedas. (I guess one could even make a weak comparison between all this and the Talmud vs. the Torah in contemporary Jewish practice — the interpreters are, however, more numerous and less coherent in the case of Indic religion(s)..)
— jackal · Jan 16, 11:18 AM · #
Noah, There’s a lot here that I agree with, but also a lot to disagree with.
1) I don’t think the Parsees are really part of “Indian civilization”. Iranian religion had a tremendous amount of mutual influence on Judaism and, ultimately, Christianity (particularly through its influence on various Christian “heresies” and the reaction against them). It’s likely that a lot of Christian thinking about the devil, the war between good and evil, angels, and the afterlife is ultimately due to Persia. Their influence on the Hindu civilization of India was, however, marginal at best. (I say this as a fairly traditionalist Christian of Hindu ancestry, who has a great admiration for the Zoroastrian faith). 2) “Western civilization” is not a term that I like much, partly because there is so much division and diversity in worldviews within ‘the West’. Really, how much does a peasant in highland Peru or a steelworker in the Urals have with a computer programmer in Brussels? Very little. I incline more to Huntington’s conception that, at the very least, Orthodox civilization and Latin American civilization are seriously distinct from the civilization of North America and Western Europe. In general, Enlightenment liberalism (the value complex of secularism, individualism, capitalism and liberal democracy) is pretty thoroughly ingrained throughout North America and Western Europe. It isn’t nearly so ingrained in the Orthodox East or in the Catholic South, and is often seen as something foreign, threartening, and imperialistic. 3) Judaism and Christianity are, really, very different, and it annoys me when liberal Christians today try to elide the differences. In large part they developed in opposition to one another.
4) I also don’t like the phrasing that “Jesus was a Jew”. From my (Christian) perspective, that emphasizes his human nature at the expense of his divine nature. Properly speaking, he was God; he is the object of worship, nothing less. While he was a Jew by adoption, and probably one biologically through His mother, he certainly wasn’t a Jew in terms of what he believed to be true about the nature of God (that God is a trinity, and that He was the begotten son of the Father)- those propositions are blasphemous by Jewish standards, as I understand them. 5) The Old Testament isn’t, I think, viewed as the same kind of scripture by Christians and Jews. For Jews, it is self-sustaining, a description of God’s relationship with His people. For Christians, it has value because it prophecies Christ, not the other way around. Christ is the Logos, the Incarnate God, the central story: the Old Testament is simply prologue.
— Hector · Jan 18, 04:44 AM · #
Trinitarian Christians would take great offence at being excluded from the category of “strict monotheists”. Perhaps you meant “strict Unitarians”? The doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation may or may not be true, but if they are true, they in no way disqualify their adherents from “belief in only one God”. To blithely equate monotheism with unitarianism suggests that the writer doesn’t understand Trinitarian beliefs on their own terms.
— Rod Blaine · Jan 18, 09:43 PM · #
Re: but as for the indic religions, i am of the inclination to accept those who would claim that they are fundamentally more in keeping with the non-indo-european heritage of india.
We can say much the same about ancient European paganism: it was a fusion of both Indo-European and pre-Indoeuropean elements— although the substrates were of course very different between India and Europe.
Re: I incline more to Huntington’s conception that, at the very least, Orthodox civilization and Latin American civilization are seriously distinct from the civilization of North America and Western Europe. Latin America, yes: it’s civilization derives in no small part from native elements (plus some African influences in some areas) that are very alien to Europe. But Eastern Europe is still Europe, its civilization also rests on the three-pronged foundation of Grece, Rome and Christianity (with the adition of the “barbarian” Slavic elements, which are not in any major way too greatly different from the Germannic elements found further west). The isolation of Russia from Europe during the Mongol era does give Russia a different spin in some ways (but the same can be said of Iberia during its Moorish period), but Russian history is otherwise quite parallel to the history of the rest of Europe: the coalescence of a nation state in the 15th and 16th century, imperial growth, absolutism, “benevolent despotism”, reaction and revolution, totalitarianism. Yes, there is a sub-civilizational split between east and west in Europe, but there’s also one between the Romance/Catholic South and the Germannic/Protestant North— and between Britain with its overseas children and the Continent. Re: I also don’t like the phrasing that “Jesus was a Jew”. From my (Christian) perspective, that emphasizes his human nature at the expense of his divine nature. It’s no worse than saying “Jesus was male” or “Jesus spoke Aramaic”. I can’t see why a Jewish Jesus is any more problematic than a male Jesus. The truth of the Incarnation is that God became Man — and not just Man in some vague Gnostic/Platonic sense, but a specific man in a specific time and place with all the localities that that requires.
Re: he certainly wasn’t a Jew in terms of what he believed to be true about the nature of God At that time in Judaism there was no little diversity of opinion on matters theological. The narrowing of the possible in Judaism belongs to the later rabbinical era, when in fact the hammering out of “official” Judaism was undertaken partially in reaction to and rejection of Christian claims.
— JonF · Jan 20, 03:46 AM · #
Re: At that time in Judaism there was no little diversity of opinion on matters theological. Yes. But there were limits, and one of those limits was a strict monotheism, with no division into “Persons”. The Jews did not even want God to be represented so I find it hard to believe they were OK with him incarnating Himself. One of the arguments for the divinity of Christ is that the idea of incarnation was so blasphemous to Judaism that no pious Jew would have claimed to be God unless he actually was God (or else a particularly cynical megalomaniac, which Jesus wasn’t.) By contrast, there’s nothing scandalous about the idea of incarantion to Hindus, and by the same token there are plenty of people who claim to be ‘godmen’ in India today.
As for your point about Orthodoxy, yes of course Orthodoxy has roots in the same things that the West does. However, the Orthodox (and the Latin Americans) have interpreted and developed those elements in different ways. There are individualistic, liberal, rationalist strains within Christian civilization as well as more collectivistic, mystical strains. The West has emphasized the former side, while Orthodoxy and Latin America have emphasized the later. Neither is a “truer” heir of Greece, Rome and Judaea than the other, but they are quite definitely different. Russia and its satellites aren’t a defective copy of the West, it’s its own distinct civilization which has as much to teach the West as vice versa.
— Hector · Jan 20, 05:34 PM · #
Re: But there were limits, and one of those limits was a strict monotheism, with no division into “Persons”. The Jews did not even want God to be represented so I find it hard to believe they were OK with him incarnating Himself.
Actually, if you read the Old Testament there are various passages (notably in Genesis) where God appears in bodily/material form. Again, I think you are reading later Judaic strictures back into antiquity. Christianity emerged out of Judaism, the early Apostles were all Jews, as were large numbers of the first converts. Core Christian beliefs, including the Incarnation and the Trinity, could not have been so far removed from Judaism as to make that impossible. The Holy Spirit is actually spoken of in Essene texts, and there was also a sense that the Messiah would be divine — hence the charge that Jesus was blaspheming by claiming to be the Messiah, the logic being that he wasn’t (that was the starting premise) so by claiming falsely to be, he was impersonating God.
Re: However, the Orthodox (and the Latin Americans) have interpreted and developed those elements in different ways.
My point about the Latin Americans is that they incorporate a huge alien element (Native American civilization) so cannot be seen as simply European. That’s not true of Eastern Europe: The Slavs were no more alien than the Germannic barbarians; both were Indoeuropeans with a common ancestry and culture with the pre-Christian Kelts, Italians, Greeks, Illyrians and Thracians. Yes, there’s a cultural fault between east and West in Europe, but it doesn’t run all the way to the core of the Earth. It’s about as deep as the cultural fault between Germans and Latins, or between the British and the Continental folk. Or for that matter, in another civilzation, the fault between Arabs, Persians and Turks in the Middle East. By the way I don’t like the designation “West” at all; I prefer “European” (though that’s geographically awkward since it includes the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). There’s no unified “West”, but there is a European civilzation, born of the Indoeuropean tribes (though we allow the Uralic and Basque folk to be part of it too), heir to Greece and Rome, schooled by Christianity. It has four divisions: the South, the East, the North, and the Britannic. In term of history by the way the fault between North and South in Europe has bred far, far more conflict than the division between East and West ever did.
— JonF · Jan 21, 01:06 AM · #
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