This is not the first time that the Christian view of man has brought down Western culture and society. There was a view of man that existed prior to Christianity; a view of man that, once Christianity took hold, was forbidden to exist, and all further cultivation of it died with the arrival of Paul's "good news." This "good news" lasted until the Renaissance, when man shook off the priest and regained his Aristotle. Just think,what if Classical Western Man had not been interrupted, if we did not take a thousand year time-out from all that was best in man; where would mankind be today?
St. Augustine, in his City of God, made an attempt to show that it was Rome's disobedience and rejection of Paul's "glad tidings," rather than the acceptance of them, that was the cause of decay and final collapse of Rome. Many conservatives make the exact argument today, and say that a return to our founding "Christian principles" is our only cure. Augustine was arguing with the critics of his time that had witnessed for themselves the corrosive nature of Christian ethics. Today we hear the same charge: that our crisis is not caused by adherence to Christian philosophy, but by the rejection of it. I disagree with both Augustine and his modern disciples of death.
Modern man has the advantage of time and hindsight to get a fuller view of the matter. We can now not only clearly see that it was the introduction of Christianity into history that played a large part in temporarily bringing an end to what was best in man, and thus to Rome. And unlike Augustine, we moderns have the luxury of looking back and clearly seeing, oddly enough, that Western man was somehow magically revitalized once he was able to escape the spell of Augustine and his disciples of death. The fire that inspired his escape was the rediscovery of his lost Aristotle. With the rebirth of Aristotle came the rebirth of the Classical view of man and his place in the world.
Two modern authors come to mind, who give an historical account of Christianity's impact on Rome, that are not taught in our public schools, homes or churches. The first account is from Edward Gibbon, who in his monumental epic seven volume history, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, places the blame squarely on the doorstep of Christianity. In the following, Gibbon describes the scene of how Christianity first cunningly slipped into the body politic of Rome, and reversed the world order:
"That the new sect of Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves that last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they belonged. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds whom their age, their sex, or their education has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors."
Indeed, Christianity slipped in like a dark phantom, being sure to avoid detection from the men of reason - the philosophers.
The second author that comes to mind is Friedrich Nietzsche, the often reviled German philosopher who made the official proclamation that God was dead in his infamous, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche went on to further illustrate the magnitude of the crisis caused by the death of god, and what this realization has wrought upon the Western psyche in his later writings. In Nietzsche's, Gay Science, his Madman enters the Marketplace in search of god, only to find his murders who have not yet realized the magnitude of their deed, or the dark cloud that lingers above. In his last work, The Anti-Christian, Nietzsche agonizingly laments over the tremendous loss Christianity left in its wake after conquering the ancient world:
"The whole labor of the ancient world in vain: I have no words to express my feelings at something so dreadful."
He continues by expressing his feelings:
"All in vain! Overnight merely a memory! - Greeks! Romans! Nobility of instinct, of taste, methodical investigation, genius for organization and government, the faith in, the will to a future for mankind, the great yes to all things, visibly present to all the senses as the Imperium Romanum, not overwhelmed overnight by a natural event! Not trampled down by Teutons and other such clodhoppers! But ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered - only sucked dry!"
And, sucked dry she was; and when she fell, Western man plunged into the Dark Ages where the vampires ruled the minds of man through fear, shame, and guilt. It would be close to 700 years before Western man would awake from his self induced slumber and finally regain his bearings once again. One of the funniest things when looking back through all this is the fact that we originally reclaimed our Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas!
The Church authorities at first did not approve of Aquinas digging up that old "pagan philosopher," but, when he showed them what use Aristotle could be put to, they crowned Aquinas as the Angelic Doctor of the Church. Turns out the priests were right to worry; for they let the fox in the henhouse when they let Aristotle in the gate. Within a few hundred years, the Renaissance was full blown - the Renaissance; the rebirth of all that was once lost, a rebirth of what was best in man; a rebirth of art, a rebirth of architecture, a rebirth of literature, a rebirth of science, and most importantly, a rebirth of man's rational mind as his greatest resource, and his own life as his greatest value.
