The West's Contest of Faith

History of Western Civilisation Essay 2019

Western Civilisation is a product of its past. While it has been influenced by many ideas and events throughout its vast history, it has been primarily shaped by a contest of faith between human reason and divine revelation. In this discussion, the term faith refers to having great or complete trust in something or someone. Reason and spirituality exist in relentless tension with each other, but it is the forced interplay between them that has shaped the West. Reason or spirituality alone do not result in the West.

REASON ALONE

Reason and logic, without religious belief, has historically led to scientific materialism, relativism and nihilism. Modern science proposes that one can only know truth by what one observes, tests and measures – using logic, not belief, in understanding the known world. If physical matter is the only reality, then life has no great meaning or purpose, and so people fail to value obligation or responsibility, as these words lose their weight. Only opinions about morality can exist, and so everything can technically become permissible in the secular world. The Soviet Union is a prominent example of a world without regard for the divine. Soviet policy was based upon Marxism-Leninism. Karl Marx believed that religion was the human response to earthly suffering and “the opium of the people” (from A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right) that gave working classes false hope by reducing immediate suffering with pleasant illusions. It followed that the Soviet Union’s Communist Party made atheism their official doctrine. Stalinist Russia is said to have had a death toll of up to or over 20 million (some estimates suggest 40 million). It is easily argued that Marxist Communism exists as the most deadly political ideology to date. David Hume believed that reason was always a slave to passions. As such, reason alone will always result in selfish ambition and disaster. Faith in human reason is a part of the West’s history, however alone it potentially may have produced a drastically different civilisation to the one known today. The West was not shaped irreligiously.

SPIRITUALITY ALONE

Belief in the divine, without human rationality, will often lead to zealotry and superstition – uncompromising devotion to unjustified principles as the only path toward meaning. God’s commands are essential for having a moral civilisation and happy life. The state is powered by the idea that if law-enforcers did not catch one breaking the law, the omnipresent God would. However spirituality without reason is liable to result in a way of living that resembles the Muslim World. Contemporary examples of theocracies include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan, the latter four of which conduct extreme persecution against Christians. Saudi Arabia still has very high persecution and is ranked fifteenth out of the top fifty countries that persecute Christians – according to the Open Doors USA World Watch List. There is little tolerance for difference and rights are not universal, if they exist at all. A society without reason makes no room for bargaining and will operate totally from their holy scriptures, whether they are fit for government and nation prosperity or not. A specific example of religious societal zealotry would be Mullah Mohammad Omar’s Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, under which 400 000 political and religious opponents were killed (according to a United Kingdom news resource, Daily Mail). Under these authoritarian-states, a minority or non-traditional belief is regarded as a form of treason and is met with hostility.

CONFLICT AND TENSION

It should be clear that a society lacking in either human reason or divine revelation is unfavourable. The innocent die and the guilty escape judgement. Yet these civilisations can be regarded as default societies as the two faiths are often hostile toward each other, making it difficult for them to coexist. However, rejecting both can throw a society into moral chaos and disorder. Reason is more logic and facts centred, and tends to be more empirical. Spirituality is belief in revelation, inspiration or authority. Reason is usually subjective, whilst spirituality regards itself as objectively binding. Religious belief might be viewed as a hindrance to one’s ability to think rationally about the world, and likewise reason might be viewed as a human flaw that leads one astray and puts souls at risk of damnation. It is often claimed that spirituality discourages critical thinking because it requires that one accepts certain elements on belief alone. One might argue that religion is demanding and restrictive, and as such, doesn’t respect human autonomy and the ability to deliberate and reason independently. Whilst this can be regarded as a false statement in many religions, it still remains a true perspective to many of those who place great reliance upon reason.

HISTORICAL INTERPLAY

However, the two faiths together are a necessary element of what defines the West. Western history is full of cases in which reason and spirituality have moved apart for lesser and come together for greater. One can argue that the crusades came about due to a lack of reason, as religious leaders interpreted texts to their own ends. At the time of Magna Carta, jurist Henry de Bracton wrote a treatise on the principles of law and justice in his work Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus Anglie, influencing the constitution of medieval England with the concept of the state as “under God.” The Renaissance was a step toward reason, humanism, secularism and individualism. Martin Luther’s Reformation was an attempt to balance the scales, applying reason and personal inquiry before God to scripture, and putting emphasis on interpretative theologies. He also challenged the papacy and promoted a separation between church and state, returning power to secular authorities. In Of Justification, Luther stated that “it is with reason, which strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it.” Chief Justice Lord Hale later influenced the construction of the English Bill of Rights (1689) by stating that “Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.” The eighteenth century Enlightenment ended all still existing Western theocracies with the idea of the social contract and consensual government. It is from this era that themes of relativism, deism, tolerance, empiricism and progress caused an acceleration of reason. A product of this period was the US Declaration of Independence which divided power into the Congress, the President and the Courts and stated that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Second US President John Adams made particular that the “Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was additionally spirituality-based as the Iranian representative noted, saying that it was a secular understanding of Christian tradition, which could not be implemented by Muslims under Shariah law. The World Wars encouraged a greater sense of humanism through totalitarianism and secular imperialism. It became communism and fascism/Nazism competing against democracy and the peoples rule, rather than exclusive secularism against Christian tradition. These ideas were broadcast and the concept of spirituality and the state as “under God” began to lessen. Fortunately, religious belief was so deeply ingrained in Western life that it was not until much closer to the present day that we see the implications of reason over spirituality appear in the form of irresponsibility, entitlement and the destruction of the family unit – just as Adams warned, immorality and irreligion would make legislated human rights and freedoms unsustainable.

INTERPLAY

Western civilisation is unique in its continuation of a balance between human reason and religious belief. The Christian tradition teaches that one is obliged to make the world better by acting virtuously in accordance with a good God’s commands. This offers a sense of purpose and meaning, and an enforcement of the idea of the individual as valuable. Reason encourages searching beyond revelation, for humanity’s telos, end or goal. Aristotle believed that man’s telos was to reason. Nobel Prize winner (for Physics 1915), Sir William Bragg in The World of Sound wrote, “From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science his power to achieve it.” He has also been credited with stating that reason and revelation are opposed “only in the same sense as that which my thumb and forefinger are opposed – and between them, I can grasp everything.” Today there is a swing toward reason, and a threat of the rejection of both faiths. However, if one destroys the link between cosmic and social orders, one destroys the validity of social order altogether, and relativism thrives. The two faiths are highly deterministic in shaping and directing the West. It is the movement between these poles that influences the form of the society of the time.

In summary, reason alone is unfavourable, spirituality alone is unfavourable, having neither is chaos. Conflict will always exist between the two faiths, but it is the divergence and convergence of them that has shaped the West over time. The West needs both.