Well, but I can turn that around on you, I guess. You claim that the Bible was inspired by G-d, and that G-d doesn’t like religion, and that people have misinterpreted the bible to create the Christian religion. So, why are there so many people who disagree with G-d’s interpretation?
And, Scotth, I’d say those things were the immediate cause of the collapse of civilization, and that they were made possible by a lot of factors, including seperate administration of the west and east, the creation of private armies by powerful individuals, growing reliance on mercenary armies, the growth of the military as an independent political force, and unrest in Central Asia causing the westward migration of barbarian tribes.
Sorry Captain Amazing… I partially retract. I did not follow you at first. (Maybe I did, but I don’t think I did.)
I think you mean the actual Germanic invaders that finally toppled Rome.
If so, I will step back and only say that Rome was certainly crumbling quite nicely before they arrived, and that probably allowed their invasion to succeed. The complete collapse could have happened without an outside threat in a due course anyway… emphasize could… The invaders certainly did speed things on their way at the very least.
When I first responded, I thought you were just commenting on the general anarchy that existed within Europe after the fall but during the “dark ages”
That is what I meant; the German barbarians and their immediate predecessors and successors. The general anarchy was a result of the collapse of the Empire, no question. I am interested, though, in why you place the blame for the collapse on religion (and, I assume, Christianity), and how you explain why the eastern part of the empire, while just as religiously Christian, lasted another thousand years.
I would not lay the blame for the fall completely there, but a contributing factor. The church, with emperial support became more important than the political state and deemphasized the importance of serving the state to its members citizens. I think this is significant. Admittedly, that goes nowhere to answer your question concerning the eastern part of the empire. I’ll have to look into that one, good food for thought.
After the fall, I feel the case is very strong that the intellectual oppression of the church in western Europe was very responsible for the duration of the dark ages. The absolute destitution of the people caused by enforced state of ignorance had incredible dark consequences.
I read every word of your post, and am offended by the accusation that I did otherwise.
I’m quite confident, were it not for the Catholic Church, there would be no Christianity, period. Jesus established his Church to continue his work. Without her, it all would have ended at the Ascension.
The only Biblical interpretations that matter are those produced by the authoritative ecumenical councils of the Church, which are directly guided in their decisions by the Holy Spirit, and thus are free from theological error. That covers very little of the Bible. The rest of it may be read as you please, so long as it isn’t read in such a way that it contradicts those undeniable interpretations handed down by the holy synods.
The Bible is not the “Word” of God. When used with a capital W, the term Word can only refer to the PERSON of Jesus. The term Word, or Logos, cannot be used to mean a bunch of dead pieces of tree with ink on them. Learn the difference between the word of God and the Word of God.
Catholics do not cliam the ability to divine inalienable truth from the Bible on our own, but only under the guidance of the Church.
Inspired, yes. Dictated? No. The Holy Spirit inspired John to write his Gospel. It did not, however, dictate the Gospel to John. John, and all other Biblical writers, wrote in their own words and from their own understanding. Inspiration does not equal authorship.
The majority of the world’s Christians, being Catholic or Orthodox, would disagree with this statement.
The humans who interpret the Bible and formed the doctrines of Christianity in the Ecumenical Councils were not better or more important, as people, then you. They were, however, specifically and infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit. You are not.
Actually, I’d argue that the church was a stabilizing force in the “dark” ages (which I’m dating from the fall of Rome to the Carolingian Rennaisance). It tried to set up rules of war, like the “Truce of G-d”, it established loyalties beyond those to one’s lord or tribal chief, but instead to the entire Christian world, acted as an overarching center of authority, and provided a kind of system of social services and education. Intellectual repression wasn’t really an issue, and wouldn’t really be one until the rennaisance. People were too busy worrying about getting enough food to eat and protecting themselves to worry about any sort of intellectual oppression.
I was of the mind that the intellectual oppression directly led to poverty, not enough to eat, etc… Poor education is the best way I know to stay in poverty.
#1 Scotth and Captain Amazing-
Let’s not forget the Plague Of Justinian. Hippocrates was developing the ideas that form the foundation of modern medicine. Then, bubonic plague broke out. The scientist and doctors couldn’t help. Folks turned to the church. For more info on the Plague see Charles Panatti’s The Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody.
#2 As a Jew, I feel that Judaism has been unfairly excluded from the bashing going on here.;j
Sorry… didn’t realize we were bashing (if you were addressing me and C.A. with part two that is, if you were addressing the general audience, never mind).
And I just wanted to point out that one of the predicates for alot of the follow on arguement was at least suspect.
You are quite right on how much a mess the plague was. Of course the church was much help with that either. The first outbreak of the plague was about 800 years later. Maybe medicine would have been more effective had it not been supressed all that time?
Education requires surplus and leisure. If a society isn’t producing enough to eat or has to spend all its time fighting off bad guys, it’s probably not going to develop a very extensive educational system, because everyone who’s acting as a student or a teacher can’t easily raise food or fight enemies while they’re learning or teaching.
In the Dark Ages, the only group that had any time to spend on things other than survival issues was the Church, and that’s why, instead of intellectual oppression, in fact, the Church at the time was one of the few centers of learning. If you wanted to learn to read or write, it was going to be a monk that taught you. Most written material, and most of the older documents were in the monastaries, because they were the only institution that made any effort to gather, save, and preserve the documents. You know, there’s a reason we call secretarial and administrative work “clerical”, and people who do that kind of work “clerks”. It’s because, for most of the middle ages, the people who did that sort of work were members of the clergy.
Ah, this is exactly where we differ in our impressions then.
My impression is that during this time, literacy in the general population was actually suppressed. It wasn’t just the dire conditions that maintained the profound ignorance, it was actually enforced by the church. It was held that if the population could read the bible for themselves, there would be no end to the heresies. It was very important for the population to be strictly guided in their understanding of the bible.
And this is what dragged the dark ages on for so long, or was at least a very significant contributing factor.
While many people are aware of the the inquisition really became extremely dangerous later on, many are not aware that it began in earnest shortly after the reign of Constantine.
Literacy wasn’t suppressed so much as not valued, in large part, because there wasn’t much to read. Remember, this was before the invention of the printing press, so any books would have to be copied by hand, making them extremely expensive, and out of the financial reach of the average person. Something like a complete bible would be priceless. It’s not that private ownership of bibles were suppressed, it’s just that hardly anyone could afford them. What you did see among the nobility and rich merchants (in the High Middle Ages) were psalters and books of hours, which contained bible verses and prayers. What the church did forbid was unauthorized translations of the bible in the vernacular languages, out of fear that there would be a mistranslation, either accidental or deliberate.
The Inquisition wasn’t established until the 1100s, against the Albigensians. It didn’t exist in Constantine’s time, or in the “Dark Ages”. There were laws against heresy and blasphemy, but no organized group set up to investigate them.
Ok, Plague Of Justinian 540-590. The bubonic plague then returned from 1346 to 1361. Here we’ve got the Black Death. Then came the Great Plague Of London, 1665-1666.
From page 225 of Pannati The plague of Justinian (so named because it began in his reign) was more than a disease; it made history. It’s been argued that there were three major historical ramifications to the pandemic: 1. the downfall of the Roman Empire, from which no recovery was possible; 2. the strengthening of the nascent religion of Christianity, to which people turned in extraordinary numbers in order to be spared further sickness and death; and 3. the virtual destruction of the learned field of Greek and Roman medicine, since its notions and nostrums proved useless at a time when they were most needed.
Just for the sake of terminology, let me clarify that, when I refer to the “Dark Ages”, I’m referring to the 5th-8th centuries, which ended when Charlemagne united most of Western Europe and brought about a rebirth of learning. The term isn’t used much anymore by historians, because it’s considered biased. The preferred term now is “Early Middle Ages”
I realize how precious books were at the time… I’ll look into the rest of the first paragraph.
On the second, while the formal body of the inquisition was set up later as you say. It existed in practice from at least 447 with Leo the First. Around 1150 it was reigned to a large degree. It was then unleashed in horrible fashion and given a proper name around 1230.