By Rodney Stark
Many books were written concerning the good fortune of the West, reading why Europe was once capable of pull prior to the remainder of the area through the top of the center a while. the most typical factors cite the West’s more desirable geography, trade, and expertise. thoroughly neglected is the truth that religion in cause, rooted in Christianity’s dedication to rational theology, made these types of advancements attainable. easily placed, the normal knowledge that Western luck depended upon overcoming spiritual limitations to growth is utter nonsense.
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark advances a progressive, arguable, and lengthy past due notion: that Christianity and its similar associations are, in truth, at once liable for the main major highbrow, political, medical, and financial breakthroughs of the earlier millennium.
In Stark’s view, what has propelled the West isn't the stress among secular and nonsecular society, nor the pitting of technology and the arts opposed to non secular trust. Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of cause: whereas the world’s different nice trust structures emphasised secret, obedience, or introspection, Christianity by myself embraced good judgment and cause because the course towards enlightenment, freedom, and growth. that's what made all of the difference.
In explaining the West’s dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted “truths.” for example, by way of contending that capitalism thrived centuries ahead of there has been a Protestant paintings ethic–or even Protestants–he counters the suggestion that the Protestant paintings ethic used to be liable for kicking capitalism into overdrive. within the 5th century, Stark notes, Saint Augustine celebrated theological and fabric development and the establishment of “exuberant invention.” against this, lengthy ahead of Augustine, Aristotle had condemned advertisement alternate as “inconsistent with human virtue”–which is helping extra underscore that Augustine’s instances weren't the darkish a long time however the incubator for the West’s destiny glories.
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the previous global to the recent, from the prior to the current, overturning alongside the way in which not just centuries of prejudiced scholarship however the antireligious bias of our personal time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we such a lot appreciate approximately our world–scientific growth, democratic rule, unfastened commerce–is mostly because of Christianity, by which we're all inheritors of this grand tradition.
From the Hardcover edition.
Read or Download The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success PDF
Similar church history books
Shepherding Movement (Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement)
An attractive historical past of the Shepherding flow, an influential and arguable expression of the charismatic renewal within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties. This neopentecostal circulate, led by way of renowned Bible academics Ern Baxter, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, Derek Prince a
The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers: 2-Volume Set
The two-volume paintings the recent testomony and the Apostolic Fathers deals a comparative examine of 2 collections of early Christian texts: the recent testomony; and the texts, from instantly after the hot testomony interval, that are conventionally known as the Apostolic Fathers. the 1st quantity, The Reception of the hot testomony within the Apostolic Fathers, provides a complete and rigorous dialogue of the level to which the writings later integrated within the New testomony have been recognized to and utilized by all of the Apostolic Fathers.
In Jesus, Gnosis and Dogma Roukema investigates and assesses a number of the perspectives of Jesus in early Christianity, basing his technique on a contrast among historic and theological statements approximately Jesus. historic statements may be arrived at via a severe examine of the earliest files, even if Roukema acknowledges that students range extensively right here.
The Making and Unmaking of a Saint. Hagiography and Memory in the Cult of Gerald of Aurillac
A crusader, a hermit, a bishop, a scourge sufferer, or even a repentant assassin through turns: the tales hooked up to Saint Gerald of Aurillac supply a wierd and fragmented legacy. His earliest biographies, written within the early 10th and early 11th centuries, depicted the saint as a warrior who committed his existence to pious carrier.
Additional resources for The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
Example text
Even the most militant enemies of capitalism credit it with creating previously undreamed of productivity and progress. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proposed that prior to the rise of capitalism, humans engaged “in the most slothful indolence” and that the capitalist system was “the first to show what man’s activity can bring about . . ” Capitalism achieves this “miracle” through regular reinvestment to increase productivity—through either greater capacity or improved technology—and by motivating both management and labor through ever-rising payoffs.
The material conditions needed for capitalism existed in many civilizations in various eras, including China, Islam, India, Byzantium, and probably ancient Rome and Greece as well. But none of these societies broke through and developed capitalism, as none evolved ethical visions compatible with this dynamic economic system. Instead, leading religions outside the West called for asceticism and denounced profits, while wealth was exacted from peasants and merchants by rapacious elites dedicated to display and consumption.
7 It also is well established that even in the nineteenth century, Protestant regions and nations on the Continent8 were not significantly ahead of many Catholic places—the “backwardness” of Spain notwithstanding. 9 Even though Weber was wrong, he was correct to suppose that religious ideas played a vital role in the rise of capitalism in Europe. The material conditions needed for capitalism existed in many civilizations in various eras, including China, Islam, India, Byzantium, and probably ancient Rome and Greece as well.
