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issue dated December 2, 2005<
How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science
By RODNEY STARK
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When Europeans first began to explore the globe, their greatest surprise was
not the existence of the Western Hemisphere, but the extent of their own
technological superiority over the rest of the world. Not only were the proud
Maya, Aztec, and Inca nations helpless in the face of European intruders, so
were the fabled civilizations of the East: China, India, and Islamic nations
were "backward" by comparison with 15th-century Europe. How had that happened?
Why was it that, although many civilizations had pursued alchemy, the study
led to chemistry only in Europe? Why was it that, for centuries, Europeans
were the only ones possessed of eyeglasses, chimneys, reliable clocks, heavy
cavalry, or a system of music notation? How had the nations that had arisen
from
the rubble of Rome so greatly surpassed the rest of the world?
Several recent authors have discovered the secret to Western success in
geography. But that same geography long also sustained European cultures that
were well behind those of Asia. Other commentators have traced the rise of the
West to steel, or to guns and sailing ships, and still others have credited a
more productive agriculture. The trouble is that those answers are part of
what needs to be explained: Why did Europeans excel at metallurgy,
shipbuilding, or farming?
The most convincing answer to those questions attributes Western dominance
to the rise of capitalism, which took place only in Europe. Even the most
militant enemies of capitalism credit it with creating previously undreamed of
productivity and progress. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels proposed that before the rise of capitalism, humans engaged "in the
most slothful indolence"; the capitalist system was "the first to show what
man's activity can bring about." Capitalism achieved that miracle through
regular reinvestment to increase productivity, either to create greater
capacity or
improve technology, and by motivating both management and labor through
ever-rising payoffs.
Supposing that capitalism did produce Europe's own "great leap forward," it
remains to be explained why capitalism developed only in Europe. Some writers
have found the roots of capitalism in the Protestant Reformation; others
have traced it back to various political circumstances. But, if one digs
deeper,
it becomes clear that the truly fundamental basis not only for capitalism,
but for the rise of the West, was an extraordinary faith in reason.
A series of developments, in which reason won the day, gave unique shape to
Western culture and institutions. And the most important of those victories
occurred within Christianity. While the other world religions emphasized
mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the
primary
guides to religious truth. Christian faith in reason was influenced by Greek
philosophy. But the more important fact is that Greek philosophy had little
impact on Greek religions. Those remained typical mystery cults, in which
ambiguity and logical contradictions were taken as hallmarks of sacred
origins.
Similar assumptions concerning the fundamental inexplicability of the gods
and the intellectual superiority of introspection dominated all of the other
major world religions.
But, from early days, the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme
gift from God and the means to progressively increase understanding of
Scripture and revelation. Consequently Christianity was oriented to the
future,
while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past. At least
in principle, if not always in fact, Christian doctrines could always be
modified in the name of progress, as demonstrated by reason. Encouraged by the
scholastics and embodied in the great medieval universities founded by the
church, faith in the power of reason infused Western culture, stimulating the
pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory and practice. The
rise
of capitalism also was a victory for church-inspired reason, since capi-talism
is, in essence, the systematic and sustained application of reason to
com-merce — something that first took place within the great monastic estates.
During the past century Western intellectuals have been more than willing to
trace European imperialism to Christian origins, but they have been entirely
un-willing to recognize that Christianity made any contribution (other than
intolerance) to the Western capacity to dominate other societies. Rather, the
West is said to have surged ahead precisely as it overcame re-ligious
barriers to progress, especially those impeding science. Nonsense. The success
of
the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious
foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.
Unfortunately, even many of those historians willing to grant Christianity a
role in
shaping Western progress have tended to limit themselves to tracing beneficial
religious effects of the Protestant Reformation. It is as if the previous
1,500
years of Christianity either were of little matter, or were harmful.
Such academic anti-Roman Catholicism inspired the most famous book ever
written on the origins of capitalism. At the start of the 20th century, the
German sociologist Max Weber published what soon became an immensely
influential
study: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In it Weber proposed
that capitalism originated only in Europe because, of all the world's
religions, only Protestantism provided a moral vision that led people to
restrain
their material consumption while vigorously seeking wealth. Weber argued that,
before the Reformation, restraint on consumption was invariably linked to
asceticism and, hence, to condemnations of commerce. Conversely, the pursuit
of
wealth was linked to profligate consumption. Either cultural pattern was
inimical to capitalism. According to Weber, the Protestant ethic shattered
those
traditional linkages, creating a culture of frugal entrepreneurs content to
systematically reinvest profits in order to pursue ever greater wealth, and
therein lies the key to capitalism and the ascendancy of the West.
Perhaps because it was such an elegant thesis, it was widely embraced,
despite the fact that it was so obviously wrong. Even today The Protestant
Ethic
enjoys an almost sacred status among sociologists, although economic
historians quickly dismissed Weber's surprisingly undocumented monograph on
the
irrefutable grounds that the rise of capitalism in Europe preceded the
Reformation
by centuries. Only a decade after Weber published, the celebrated Belgian
scholar Henri Pirenne noted a large literature that "established the fact that
all of the essential features of capitalism — individual enterprise, advances
in credit, commercial profits, speculation, etc. — are to be found from the
12th century on, in the city republics of Italy — Venice, Genoa, or Florence."
A generation later, the equally celebrated French historian Fernand Braudel
complained, "All historians have opposed this tenuous theory, although they
have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false.
The northern countries took over the place that earlier had so long and
brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean.
They
invented nothing, either in technology or business management." Braudel might
have added that, during their critical period of economic development, those
northern centers of capitalism were Catholic, not Protestant — the
Reformation still lay well into the future. Further, as the Canadian historian
John
Gilchrist, an authority on the economic activity of the medieval church,
pointed
out, the first examples of capitalism appeared in the great Christian
monasteries.
Though Weber was wrong, however, he was correct to suppose that religious
ideas played a vital role in the rise of capitalism in Europe. The material
conditions needed for capitalism existed in many civilizations in various
eras,
including China, the Islamic world, India, Byzantium, and probably ancient
Rome and Greece as well. But none of those societies broke through and
developed capitalism, as none evolved ethical visions compatible with that
dynamic
economic system. Instead, leading religions outside the West called for
asceticism and denounced profits, while wealth was exacted from peasants and
merchants by rapacious elites dedicated to display and consumption. Why did
things
turn out differently in Europe? Because of the Christian commitment to
rational theology, something that may have played a major role in causing the
Reformation, but that surely predated Protestantism by far more than a
millennium.
Even so, capitalism developed in only some locales. Why not in all? Because
in some European societies, as in most of the rest of the world, it was
prevented from happening by greedy despots. Freedom also was essential for the
development of capitalism. That raises another matter: Why has freedom so
seldom
existed in most of the world, and how was it nurtured in some medieval
European states? That, too, was a victory of reason. Before any medieval
European
state actually attempted rule by an elected council, Christian theologians
had long been theorizing about the nature of equality and individual rights —
indeed, the later work of such secular 18th-century political theorists as
John Locke explicitly rested on egalitarian axioms derived by church scholars.
All of this stemmed from the fact that from earliest days, the major
theologians taught that faith in reason was intrinsic to faith in God. As
Quintus
Tertullian instructed in the second century, "Reason is a thing of God,
inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided,
disposed,
ordained by reason — nothing which He has not willed should be handled and
understood by reason." Consequently it was assumed that reason held the key to
progress in understanding scripture, and that knowledge of God and the
secrets of his creation would increase over time. St. Augustine (c. 354-430)
flatly
asserted that through the application of reason we will gain an increasingly
more accurate understanding of God, remarking that although there are
"certain matters pertaining to the doctrine of salvation that we cannot yet
grasp
... one day we shall be able to do so."
Nor was the Christian belief in progress limited to theology. Augustine went
on at length about the "wonderful — one might say stupefying — advances
human industry has made." All were attributed to the "unspeakable boon" that
God
has conferred upon his creation, a "rational nature." Those views were
repeated again and again through the centuries. Especially typical were these
words preached by Fra Giordano, in Florence in 1306: "Not all the arts have
been
found; we shall never see an end of finding them."
Christian faith in reason and in progress was the foundation on which
Western success was achieved. As the distinguished philosopher Alfred North
Whitehead put it during one of his Lowell Lectures at Harvard in 1925, science
arose
only in Europe because only there did people think that science could be
done and should be done, a faith "derivative from medieval theology."
Moreover the medieval Christian faith in reason and progress was constantly
reinforced by actual progress, by technical and organizational innovations,
many of them fostered by Christianity. For the past several centuries, far too
many of us have been misled by the incredible fiction that, from the fall of
Rome until about the 15th century, Europe was submerged in the Dark Ages —
centuries of ignorance, superstition, and misery — from which it was suddenly,
almost miraculously, rescued; first by the Ren-aissance and then by the
Enlightenment. But, as even dictionaries and encyclopedias recently have begun
to
acknowledge, it was all a lie!
It was during the so-called Dark Ages that European technology and science
overtook and surpassed the rest of the world. Some of that involved original
inventions and discoveries; some of it came from Asia. But what was so
remarkable was the way that the full capacities of new technologies were
recognized
and widely adopted. By the 10th century Europe already was far ahead in terms
of farm-ing equipment and techniques, had unmatched capacities in the use of
water and wind power, and possessed superior military equipment and tactics.
Not to be overlooked in all that medieval progress was the invention of a
whole new way to organize and operate commerce and industry: capitalism.
Capitalism was developed by the great monastic estates. Throughout the
medieval era, the church was by far the largest landowner in Europe, and its
liquid assets and annual income probably exceeded that of all of Europe's
nobility
added together. Much of that wealth poured into the coffers of the religious
orders, not only because they were the largest landowners, but also in
payment for liturgical services — Henry VII of England paid a huge sum to have
10,000 masses said for his soul. As rapid innovation in agricultural
technology
began to yield large surpluses to the religious orders, the church not only
began to reinvest profits to increase production, but diversified. Having
substantial amounts of cash on hand, the religious orders began to lend money
at
interest. They soon evolved the mortgage (literally, "dead pledge") to lend
money with land for security, collecting all income from the land during the
term of the loan, none of which was deducted from the amount owed. That
practice often added to the monastery's lands because the monks were not
hesitant
to foreclose. In addition, many monasteries began to rely on a hired labor
force and to display an uncanny ability to adopt the latest technological
advances. Capitalism had arrived.
Still, like all of the world's other major religions, for centuries
Christianity took a dim view of commerce. As the many great Christian monastic
orders
maximized profits and lent money at whatever rate of interest the market
would bear, they were increasingly subject to condemnations from more
traditional members of the clergy who accused them of avarice.
Given the fundamental commitment of Christian theologians to reason and
progress, what they did was rethink the traditional teachings. What is a just
price for one's goods, they asked? According to the immensely influential St.
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), the just price is simply what "goods are worth
according to the estimate of the market at the time of sale." That is, a just
price is not a function of the amount of profit, but is whatever uncoerced
buyers are willing to pay. Adam Smith would have agreed — St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-74) did. As for usury, a host of leading theologians of the day remained
opposed to it, but quickly defined it out of practical existence. For example,
no usury was involved if the interest was paid to compensate the lender for
the costs of not having the money available for other commercial
opportunities, which was almost always easily demonstrated.
That was a remarkable shift. Most of these theologians were, after all, men
who had separated themselves from the world, and most of them had taken vows
of poverty. Had asceticism truly prevailed in the monasteries, it seems very
unlikely that the traditional disdain for and opposition to commerce would
have mellowed. That it did, and to such a revolutionary extent, was a result
of
direct experience with worldly imperatives. For all their genuine acts of
charity, monastic administrators were not about to give all their wealth to
the
poor, sell their products at cost, or give kings interest-free loans. It was
the active participation of the great orders in free markets that caused
monastic theologians to reconsider the morality of commerce.
The religious orders could pursue their economic goals because they were
sufficiently powerful to withstand any attempts at seizure by an avaricious
nobility. But for fully developed secular capitalism to unfold, there needed
to
be broader freedom from regulation and expropriation. Hence secular capitalism
appeared first in the relatively democratic city-states of north-ern Italy,
whose political institutions rested squarely on church doctrines of free will
and moral equality.
Augustine, Aquinas, and other major theologians taught that the state must
respect private property and not intrude on the freedom of its citizens to
pursue virtue. In addition, there was the central Christian doctrine that,
regardless of worldly inequalities, inequality in the most important sense
does
not exist: in the eyes of God and in the world to come. As Paul explained:
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor fee, there is
neither
male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."
And church theologians and leaders meant it. Through all prior recorded
history, slavery was universal — Christianity began in a world where as much
as
half the population was in bondage. But by the seventh century, Christianity
had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological
opposition to slavery, and, by no later than the 11th century, the church had
expelled the dreadful institution from Europe. That it later reappeared in the
New World is another matter, although there, too, slavery was vigorously
condemned by popes and all of the eventual abolition movements were of
religious
origins.
Free labor was an essential ingredient for the rise of capitalism, for free
workers can maximize their rewards by working harder or more effectively than
before. In contrast, coerced workers gain nothing from doing more. Put
another way, tyranny makes a few people richer; capitalism can make everyone
richer. Therefore, as the northern Italian city-states developed capitalist
economies, visitors marveled at their standards of living; many were equally
confounded by how hard everyone worked.
The common denominator in all these great historical developments was the
Christian commitment to reason.
That was why the West won.
Rodney Stark is university professor of the social sciences at Baylor
University. This essay is adapted from The Victory of Reason: How Christianity
Led
to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, to be published in December by
Random House. Copyright © by Rodney Stark.
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