Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason FROM THE PUBLISHER
A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization.
When the Emperor Contstantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings of Ptolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine. Only a thousand years later, with the advent of the Renaissance and the emergence of modern science, did Europe begin to free itself from the effects of Constantine's decision, yet the effects of his establishment of Christianity as a state religion remain with us, in many respects, today. Brilliantly wide-ranging and ambitious, this is a major work of history.
FROM THE CRITICS
The New York Times
It is not easy to make an interesting or even comprehensible subject out of the angry controversies about the Trinity that preoccupied early Christians. But [Freeman] manages it. Faced with the paradox inherent in the notion of God-become-man, Christians explored dozens of ingenious theories to explain the relationship between Jesus and God … Although the most important Christian thinkers, from St. Paul to Augustine, did everything they could to stifle the rationalist tradition they sought to displace, as Freeman effectively demonstrates, it is impossible to lay the aptly named Dark Ages entirely at their door. Just why the lights went out when they did remains something of a mystery.
— Anthony Gottlieb
Publishers Weekly
Freeman repeats an oft-told tale of the rise of Christianity and the supposed demise of philosophy in a book that is fascinating, frustrating and flawed. He contends that as the Christian faith developed in the first four centuries it gradually triumphed over the reigning Hellenistic and Roman philosophies. Christianity's power culminated when Constantine declared it the official state religion in 312. Freeman points to Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, as the figure who showed Constantine that the bishopric could wield power over the state. From then until the Middle Ages, Freeman argues, the church ruled triumphant, successfully squelching any challenges to its religious and political authority. Yet Freeman (The Greek Achievement) fails to show that faith became totally dominant over reason. First, he asserts that Paul of Tarsus, whom many think of as the founder of Christianity, condemned the Hellenistic philosophy of his time. Freeman is wrong about this, for the rhetorical style and the social context of Paul's letters show just how dependent he was on the philosophy around him. Second, Freeman glosses over the tremendous influence of Clement of Alexandria's open embrace of philosophy as a way of understanding the Christian faith. Third, the creeds that the church developed in the fourth century depended deeply on philosophical language and categories in an effort to make the faith understandable to its followers. Finally, Augustine's notions of original sin and the two cities depended directly on Plato's philosophy; Augustine even admits in the Confessions that Cicero was his model. While Freeman tells a good story, his arguments fail to be convincing. 16 pages of illus. Not seen by PW, 1 map. (Oct. 12) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A vigorous study of the death and rebirth of empirical thought in the Western tradition. English classicist Freeman (The Greek Achievement, 1999, etc.) charts two great strains of thought in antiquity. The first, exemplified by the work of Greek thinkers and artists such as Euripides and Aristotle, allowed that some things in the universe may well be unknowable, but that shouldnﾽt stop humans from asking about them; the second, the province of Christian thinkers such as Jerome and Augustine, held that only God can know the unknowable, and humans have no business nosing around in such matters. The first Freeman dubs "reason," the second "faith," and even if the two often blended in the work of thinkers like Plato and Aquinas, they were often opposed to each other. With the ascendancy of Christianity in the Roman world, Freeman observes, "the principles of empirical observation or logic were overruled in the conviction that all knowledge comes from God and even, in the writings of Augustine, that the human mind, burdened with Adamﾽs original sin, is incapable of thinking for itself." He notes at least part of the reason for the triumph of unquestioning faith was the inability of early Christian communities to agree on terms by which they could rationally explore the divine; part, however, was purely political: namely, the dawning awareness on the part of Constantine and other emperors that any dissension among the various Christian churches posed a source of jeopardy to their supposedly divinely sanctioned rule. (Thus, in due course, the doctrine of papal infallibility.) The strained competition between faith and reason played out over the centuries, Freeman shows, until by the end of thefourth century "the freedom to explore the nature of God was becoming restricted to the point of extinction," essentially crushing the Greek tradition until its revival, a millennium later, in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. A lucid, accessible contribution to intellectual history, and a worthy companion to Elaine Pagelsﾽs recent Beyond Belief (p. 290).
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