Terry,
This great article lends some support, I suppose, for my earlier
position that capitalism deserves the label of "good" (to which I
still more or less adhere). Regarding the same label for
Christianity (as per the article), I would hesitate; I imagine
its slightly stronger "reason" component was more accidental than
anything else. Anyway, I find the article fascinating and in
answer to a longstanding question of my own.
Long live the free internet and unregulated information!
-Mark
_____
(http://chronicle.com/) (http://chronicle.com/review/)
>From the
issue dated December 2, 2005<
How Christianity (and Capitalism) Led to Science
By RODNEY STARK
_http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tqm4xd5mqkk5px43d968m19
qmf4w3g5y_
(http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=tqm4xd5mqkk5px43d968m19
qmf4w3g5y)
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 C by Rodney Stark.
"Support and defend the Constitution of the United States against
all
enemies, foreign or domestic"
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