The Absolute and The Consistent
Composed, Monday, 13 February 2006
Modern, western civilisation as we know it today, with all its flaws or weaknesses, apogee of freedoms or summit of liberalism, is the development of at least 2000 years of prolonged thought and enquiry. We know this, because as the Hellenist school of philosophy faded as the Roman Empire waxed and waned, it was ultimately the springtime of Christian thought which as it grew through conciliar debate and defense, and holding out against the ancient philosophies, formed the foundation of Western civil law and society.
Enlightened historians today are willing to attribute to the Catholic Church much of the basis for this development in western thought. In the same way, the biased, popular view that the Inquisition was vast and cruel, or that Galileo was unfairly tried, should be examined with the true facts. The mythologies of conspiracy theories that the church sought to keep a great deal of matters secret to protect its teachings, or adulterate records and texts to consolidate its influence and power, flies in the face of scholastic research.
Particular to the West is the idea of scientific order and research. This could not have happened without the development of Christian doctrine. Most ancient religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, as well as the cultures of Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek and Maya all adhered to a belief that hindered the conceptual development of science. Their belief system was dominated by a pantheon of deities and destined to cycles of birth, death, rebirth, or that the will of the deity was absolute, and the cosmos predestined and fixed such as in modern Judaism and Islam.
The unique gift of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ contradicts and mitigates this thinking.
The first order of Christian thinking is that Yahweh “has imposed an order on the magnificient works of his wisdom… (because) he is from everlasting to everlasting.” (Sirach 42:21). As Father Stanley Jaki – award winning science historian writes – “The world being the handiwork of a supremely reasonable Person, is endowed with lawfulness and purpose… The regular return of the seasons, the unfailing course of the stars, the music of the spheres, the movement of the forces of nature according to fixed ordnances, are all the results of the One who alone can be trusted unconditionally.”
Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah taught that this natural order found its source in Yahweh, “who gives the rain, of autumn and of spring, at the right season, and reserves us the weeks appointed for harvest” (Jeremiah 2:24), who established this order that “the sun shines by day, who regulates the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs the sea, making its waves roar…” (Jeremiah 31:35).
Hence, what we can observe of this world only manifests the natural laws that has been authored by Yahweh. This idea that Yahweh had ordered the universe “by measure, number, weight” (Wisdom 11:21) promoted the philosophy that a rational, ordered universe can be studied, and its ways known. Hence, it is also possible to know something of the creative mind of God through science.
This accounts for the renaissance of scientific approaches and rational philosophy within the Christological doctrines and life of the church, where among the best minds and scientists for these hundreds of years included priests, religious and popes.
While virtually all the other civilisations of Man eventually suffered some form of stillbirth in their scientific development, we can chart and trace how the catholic church, through the Dark Ages of 600-800 AD, was to be, from the Mediaeval age through the renaissance and the modern age, be the foremost patron of the sciences and philosophies, arts and humanities.
No other civilisation can practically offer such a consistent lineage of works, development of thought, and prodigious offering of humanitarian endeavours.
As Professor Thomas E Woods, Jr notes in his book, “How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilisation” (April 2005) explains: “Orthodox Islamic scholars absolutely rejected any conception of the universe that involved consistent physical laws, because the absolute autonomy of Allah could not be restricted by natural laws. Apparent natural laws were nothing more than mere habits, so to speak, of Allah, and might be discontinued at any time” (page 79).
Christian thought embraced miracles and supernatural phenomena because of the very idea that these are unusual in the backdrop of an ordered, natural world. Hence, Yahweh is not an arbitrary deity. St Anselm therefore taught the distinction between God’s ordered power (potential ordinate) and God’s divine omnipotence (potential absoluta) being that since God has chosen to reveal to us something of His nature, in the moral order and of His plan of redemption, He has bound Himself to behave in a certain way and be trusted to keep His promise.
Part of His promise is that we can rely on the natural order, that He would redeem us from within this natural order (hence the Incarnation), and never contradict Himself (hence we retain our freewill despite).
The catholic Christian view accepts the fundamental order of the universe, and it was presumed that it was part of our destiny to find out precisely what kind of universe God created and avoid abstract thinking about how the universe must be. Again, this is consistent with the idea of what “freedom” is. When the laws of nature are not contravened, but one operates in harmony with it, one experiences natural freedom.
This was to become the key ingredient of the scientific method, acknowledging that the universe is rational, predictable and intelligible. This approach avoids two potential errors. The first cautions against speculation about the physical universe, and the second, implies that the universe is intelligible and orderly (since it would be inconsistent with God – who possesses the power to bring about randomness and lawlessness – to behave in such a manner in the physical world).
While this does not limit the power of God in any way, it is consistent with the operating nature of God in the physical universe.
Because of the history of development of Western thought, and its progenitor in Christian philosophy, the eventual rise of democratic freedoms and human rights as pillars of modern civilisation found expression and wide acceptance as “truths”.
For cultures which did not see such evolutionary bases, such as the Hindu caste system or Islamic Syariah Law, such tenets are difficult to embrace. Democracy in Islam requires moderation of current Muslim theologies and interpretations of their prophetic traditions. The formal tribal hierarchies of Arabia within which Islam came into being did not have a parliamentarian basis, but has its roots in binding divination by a human agent, not unlike the practices of the Tibetan system of Buddhism.
Because in Islam, this divination was complete and ended with the death of the Prophet, there is a closure to the extend of revelation.
This effective terminates or stillbirths all development in thought or science, social moral order etc. It is more accurate to say that arts, sciences and the humanities among Islamic scholars flourish in spite of the Quranic proposition, rather than because of it.
Hence, the arbitrary clash of civilisations we witness today in our world is because of very deep philosophical differences and diverges, between those who uphold a consistent world order, and the other which believe in absolute rule.
Modern, western civilisation as we know it today, with all its flaws or weaknesses, apogee of freedoms or summit of liberalism, is the development of at least 2000 years of prolonged thought and enquiry. We know this, because as the Hellenist school of philosophy faded as the Roman Empire waxed and waned, it was ultimately the springtime of Christian thought which as it grew through conciliar debate and defense, and holding out against the ancient philosophies, formed the foundation of Western civil law and society.
Enlightened historians today are willing to attribute to the Catholic Church much of the basis for this development in western thought. In the same way, the biased, popular view that the Inquisition was vast and cruel, or that Galileo was unfairly tried, should be examined with the true facts. The mythologies of conspiracy theories that the church sought to keep a great deal of matters secret to protect its teachings, or adulterate records and texts to consolidate its influence and power, flies in the face of scholastic research.
Particular to the West is the idea of scientific order and research. This could not have happened without the development of Christian doctrine. Most ancient religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, as well as the cultures of Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek and Maya all adhered to a belief that hindered the conceptual development of science. Their belief system was dominated by a pantheon of deities and destined to cycles of birth, death, rebirth, or that the will of the deity was absolute, and the cosmos predestined and fixed such as in modern Judaism and Islam.
The unique gift of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ contradicts and mitigates this thinking.
The first order of Christian thinking is that Yahweh “has imposed an order on the magnificient works of his wisdom… (because) he is from everlasting to everlasting.” (Sirach 42:21). As Father Stanley Jaki – award winning science historian writes – “The world being the handiwork of a supremely reasonable Person, is endowed with lawfulness and purpose… The regular return of the seasons, the unfailing course of the stars, the music of the spheres, the movement of the forces of nature according to fixed ordnances, are all the results of the One who alone can be trusted unconditionally.”
Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah taught that this natural order found its source in Yahweh, “who gives the rain, of autumn and of spring, at the right season, and reserves us the weeks appointed for harvest” (Jeremiah 2:24), who established this order that “the sun shines by day, who regulates the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs the sea, making its waves roar…” (Jeremiah 31:35).
Hence, what we can observe of this world only manifests the natural laws that has been authored by Yahweh. This idea that Yahweh had ordered the universe “by measure, number, weight” (Wisdom 11:21) promoted the philosophy that a rational, ordered universe can be studied, and its ways known. Hence, it is also possible to know something of the creative mind of God through science.
This accounts for the renaissance of scientific approaches and rational philosophy within the Christological doctrines and life of the church, where among the best minds and scientists for these hundreds of years included priests, religious and popes.
While virtually all the other civilisations of Man eventually suffered some form of stillbirth in their scientific development, we can chart and trace how the catholic church, through the Dark Ages of 600-800 AD, was to be, from the Mediaeval age through the renaissance and the modern age, be the foremost patron of the sciences and philosophies, arts and humanities.
No other civilisation can practically offer such a consistent lineage of works, development of thought, and prodigious offering of humanitarian endeavours.
As Professor Thomas E Woods, Jr notes in his book, “How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilisation” (April 2005) explains: “Orthodox Islamic scholars absolutely rejected any conception of the universe that involved consistent physical laws, because the absolute autonomy of Allah could not be restricted by natural laws. Apparent natural laws were nothing more than mere habits, so to speak, of Allah, and might be discontinued at any time” (page 79).
Christian thought embraced miracles and supernatural phenomena because of the very idea that these are unusual in the backdrop of an ordered, natural world. Hence, Yahweh is not an arbitrary deity. St Anselm therefore taught the distinction between God’s ordered power (potential ordinate) and God’s divine omnipotence (potential absoluta) being that since God has chosen to reveal to us something of His nature, in the moral order and of His plan of redemption, He has bound Himself to behave in a certain way and be trusted to keep His promise.
Part of His promise is that we can rely on the natural order, that He would redeem us from within this natural order (hence the Incarnation), and never contradict Himself (hence we retain our freewill despite).
The catholic Christian view accepts the fundamental order of the universe, and it was presumed that it was part of our destiny to find out precisely what kind of universe God created and avoid abstract thinking about how the universe must be. Again, this is consistent with the idea of what “freedom” is. When the laws of nature are not contravened, but one operates in harmony with it, one experiences natural freedom.
This was to become the key ingredient of the scientific method, acknowledging that the universe is rational, predictable and intelligible. This approach avoids two potential errors. The first cautions against speculation about the physical universe, and the second, implies that the universe is intelligible and orderly (since it would be inconsistent with God – who possesses the power to bring about randomness and lawlessness – to behave in such a manner in the physical world).
While this does not limit the power of God in any way, it is consistent with the operating nature of God in the physical universe.
Because of the history of development of Western thought, and its progenitor in Christian philosophy, the eventual rise of democratic freedoms and human rights as pillars of modern civilisation found expression and wide acceptance as “truths”.
For cultures which did not see such evolutionary bases, such as the Hindu caste system or Islamic Syariah Law, such tenets are difficult to embrace. Democracy in Islam requires moderation of current Muslim theologies and interpretations of their prophetic traditions. The formal tribal hierarchies of Arabia within which Islam came into being did not have a parliamentarian basis, but has its roots in binding divination by a human agent, not unlike the practices of the Tibetan system of Buddhism.
Because in Islam, this divination was complete and ended with the death of the Prophet, there is a closure to the extend of revelation.
This effective terminates or stillbirths all development in thought or science, social moral order etc. It is more accurate to say that arts, sciences and the humanities among Islamic scholars flourish in spite of the Quranic proposition, rather than because of it.
Hence, the arbitrary clash of civilisations we witness today in our world is because of very deep philosophical differences and diverges, between those who uphold a consistent world order, and the other which believe in absolute rule.
Comments
Post a Comment