Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment, but I have been having an interesting dialogue with Peter Creswell about the history of theology.

To sum up PC follows the 20th century novelist Ayn Rand. Rand's followers view Aristotle as the "father of the enlightenment," they appear to hold a view of history that is extremely common in popular history. The story goes like this: prior to the rise of Christianity was the "classical period" where science and reason flourished among the ancient greek thinkers (of which Aristotle is the par excellence). This learning was extinguished by the rise of Christianity, which hated reason and science in favour of a supersitious faith. This brought about a period called the 'dark ages' where all progress and science were suppressed. The discovery of Aristotle's works in the late middle ages changed this, people began following reason again and as a result liberated themselves from the shackles of dark age superstitions most notably Christianity. It was this liberation from religious supersition that brought about the rise of science, a rise contested unsucessfully by the Church, which resulted in the enlightenment where secularism prevailed. Such things as liberty and freedom come from the enlightenment, not from Christianity, which opposed it.

I have maintained for some time now that this story is mistaken and based on simplistic and often caricatured readings of the history of theology. PC on the other hand demurs, he thinks this is clearly true and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply spouting religious propaganda. The exchange is below. PC's comments are in italics my responses follow each one.

1. You see, at the root of the Enlightenment was the knowledge that reason is capable of explaining existence -- that is, that reason is our means of acquiring knowledge, and it is knowledge of this world, not of the next one. Knowledge of nature, not of “super-nature,” is that promotes life on earth.

Actually, no. Many of the major enlightenment figures did not limit reason to nature. Descartes’ defended the ontological argument, Locke, defended Christianity and theism and in fact his epistemology was motivated by the desire to be able to come to correct conclusions about God (this is according to what his friend wrote on one of the earliest manuscripts of Locke’s essay). Berkley was a theist who wanted to refute materialism, Hume’s religious affinities are a matter of debate but many view him as a theist or deist. Reid was a Presbyterian minister who wanted to use reason to fight skepticism about religion. Berkley defended the ontological and cosmological arguments and used reason to develop a theodicy. Kant wanted to make room for faith and immortality and defended the moral argument. Newton’s preface states that his basis for adopting the scientific method was theological (and anti-Aristotelian btw) and he developed his physics, in part, to defend the existence of God. I could go on.

Moreover, one of the major problems with the epistemology of the enlightenment (known as classical foundationalism) is that it had trouble providing a basis for knowledge of an external world. This is a central issue in Descartes through to Locke, Berkley, Hume, Reid, etc. Locke believed that much of what we perceive are secondary qualities, created by our mind. Hume took the skepticism to its conclusion. Berkley, Reid and Descartes appealed to theology to solve these skeptical problems. Kant used this skepticism to defend theology.

2. The fact is that since the rediscovery of Aristotle's writings, the Church has sought to reconcile reason and mysticism, and to appropriate the pagan Aristotle as some sort of patron saint.

Actually the project of using reason to defend, develop and refine faith predates Aristotle and goes all the way back to Philo of Alexandria. Then there are the early Church fathers like Justin (a Greek philosopher), Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Athenagoras, Clement, Gregory of Nazianius, Basil, to name a few. Moreover, classical Greek philosophy and learning was promoted prior to Aquinas by people like Boethius, Isidore, Anselm, Bede, Peter Damian, Abelard and so on. Some early Christian thinkers were hostile to Greek Philosophy or hostile to it in certain contexts but many were not and the suggestion that the anti-philosophy camp was main-stream is simply false.

3 Aristotle's method of observation-based rationality was so utterly at odds with the religionist thinking that had dominated the Dark Ages, and was responsible for those Ages being Dark, that they struck even religious thinkers like a bombshell when they were rediscovered after a millennia of darkness.

Wrong again, Numbers and Lindberg note that recent historical research suggests that this portrayal of the early middle ages as “the dark ages” is a caricature. (David C Lindberg “The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon and the Handmaiden Metaphor” in When Science & Christianity Meet, ed. David C. Lindberg & Ronald L. Numbers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003) 7-8). A conclusion shared by the studies of Henri Pirenne (A History of Europe from the End of the Roman World in the West to the Beginning of Western States, (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958)) and Marc Bloch (Feudal Society, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1961)) and Richard Hodge (“The Not So Dark Ages,” Archaeology 51 (September/October 1998).

Contemporary encycolpaedias bear this out; the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopaedia states that the term “dark ages” is no longer used by historians because this period is “no longer thought to have been so dim.’ Similarly the Encyclopaedia Britannica states the term “dark ages” is “now rarely used by historians because of the unacceptable value judgment it implies,” the term “dark ages” incorrectly implies this was “a period of intellectual darkness and barbarity.”

3 [W]hen the works of Aristotle—the master of natural science and secular philosophy—were rediscovered in 12th-century Islamic Spain, it is no mystery that Western European thinkers—after centuries of suppression and penury.

Actually the suppression of heretical views rarely occured in the, so called, dark ages. The early church supported freedom of religion until the fifth century when Augustine reluctantly supported suppression of the dontatists. Some Roman emperors put in place laws against heresy which were enforced sporadically in the late roman period (often with protests from the church) but these laws fell out of use and were not enforced in the period mistakenly called the dark ages.

It was not until after the 'dark ages' that heresy was suppressed by Inquisitional courts. In fact it was the heavily Aristotelian Dominican order which carried this suppression out and who justified it. This is all well documented in Joseph Lecler Toleration and the Reformation, trans. by TL Weslow (New York: Association Press, 1960); Edward Peter’s, Inquisition, (London: Collier Macmillan, 1981) and also by Stark (For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

4. In fact the the scientific revolution came about because of a rejection of the Church's intellectual domination.

The thesis that the Church for centuries consistently suppressed science and prevented its flourishing (known as the conflict thesis) originates in two works, John Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White in his book A History of The Warfare Between Science and Theology in Christendom. The conflict thesis is now widely rejected by historians of science. Several people such as Stanley Jaki, (The Road to Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)); Alfred Whitehead, (Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925); Peire Duhem, (L'Aube du savoir: épitomé du système du monde (histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic), ed. Anastasios Brenner, Paris, Hermann, selections from Duhem 1913-59). Michael Foster ("The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the rise of Modern Natural Science," Mind 43 (1934), 446–468 "Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (I)" Mind 44 (1935) 439–466; "Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (II)" Mind 45 (October, 1936), 1–27. Also, Reijer Hookykaas (Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, 1972) and Stark have all called this thesis into question and argued that Christian ways of understanding lead to the rise of Science.

Other’s, most notably Numbers and Lindberg, while not wanting to defend the claim that Christianity fostered the rise of Science, also question the conflict thesis. In an anthology they edited, entitled God and Nature, Numbers and Lindberg suggest a more nuanced thesis; that the relationship between theology and science has been too complex over the ages for either generalisation to be correct.

However both schools, as far as I can tell, reject Whites work as a piece of propaganda. As Collin Russel notes “Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact, that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship.” ("The Conflict of Science and Religion" in The Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, New York 2000). John Hedley Brooke, the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, writes in Science and Religion - Some Historical Perspectives (1991), “In its traditional forms, the [conflict] thesis has been largely discredited”. Similarly, Edward Grant Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University writes, “If revolutionary rational thoughts were expressed in the Age of Reason [the 18th century], they were only made possible because of the long medieval tradition that established the use of reason as one of the most important of human activities” In the same vein Steven Shapin Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego writes, "In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the 'warfare between science and religion' and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science."

5. Need I mention Galileo? That Galileo saw Aristotle as an adversary was wholly due to the Church's appropriation of The Philsopher, but in evey important respect Galileo's method of observation-based rationality was Aristotle's, whether Galileo knew it or not.

Actually the Galileo example does not fit PC's picture. As William Shea notes Galileo was part of a Platonic revival in Florence. (“Galileo and the Church” in Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg (eds). God and Nature Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science ( Berkley: University of California Press, 1986) 124). He rejected an Aristoleian view of science in favour of a more Platonic view. As a result, Stillman Drake (Galileo (Oxford: Oxford University Press)) notes that Galileo’s strongest opponents were supporters of Aristotle and it was more his calling into question Aristotle that got him into trouble than his disagreements with the Church.

Interestingly, the Copernican theory that the earth revolves around the sun originates with fourteenth century theologians Burdian and Nicolas d'Oresme; their theories were based in part on Theological condemnations of Aristotelian Philosophy that had occurred in the previous century.

Finally Galileo in developing his views followed the teachings on religion and science propounded by “dark age” writer Augustine of Hippo.

Its amusing to see PC cite a Platonist anti-Aristotelian thinker persecuted by the Aristotelian scientists for following the views of science and religion expounded by a “dark age” philosopher as evidence that Aristotelian ways of thinking liberated science from the shackles of platonist and "dark age" theologians.

6. Newton is not revered for his mystic rambklings or his alchemy; he is revered because his physics integrated and explained such a wealth of actual observations of reality.

Newton’s physics in fact were based on the theological voluntarism of the late middle ages which rejected Aristotelian theories on the ground that God, being sovereign, freely choose the create the world. This is evident from the preface of Newton’s Principia.

7. Locke is revered not for wanting to exclude Catholics from the throne and supporting the suppression of atheists, but for explaining that the protection of individual rights is the only legitimate job of governments, and explaining and integrating the method by which individual rights are best protected.

Actually Locke’s argument in the The Two Treatises of Government is very different from this. Unlike so many Libertarians I encounter I have actually read the book several times. Locke, in fact, grounds rights not in the sovereignty of the individual but in the sovereignty of God. Moreover, his moral theory is based on the voluntarist accounts of natural law which were developed in opposition to Aristotelian natural law theory and which were based on theological concerns about Aristotle limiting God’s freedom and omnipotence.

8. Ockham and Scotus and Albertus Magnus are properly revered not because they were Christians, but for their enormous contributions to the popularisation of logic and reason in an age of Christian darkness.

Actually none of these thinkers lived in the so called "dark ages;" the first two you mention lived in the the later Middle Ages. Moreover, Scotus and Ockham in fact were voluntarists. Voluntarism was a movement based in part on the theological condemnations the Church had made of Aristotle. As Edward Grant notes, in many cases what we see is not Aristotle bringing light to a superstitious church but a Church offering theologically based objections to Aristotle and the scientific progress being the result of attempts to find theologically acceptable alternatives to Aristotle.

9. Aquinas is revered not because he was part of the newly founded the Dominican Order set up to combat heresy in Europe, but because he opened the door to intellectual freedom in the west, however inadvertently.

Unfortunately, again the facts do not support this. During the "dark ages" the official policy towards Jews pagans and heretics was de facto tolerance. As I noted most of the early church supported freedom of religion. It was the later middle ages which saw the establishment of Inquisitions to prosecute heresy. Interestingly, Aquinas supported these Inquistions and used his Aristotelian reason to defend them. However, Aquinas did support tolerating Jews and non-believers citing the authority of “dark age” theologians for support of his position.

In a widely-anthologised essay Morality: Religious and Secular. Patrickl Nowell Smith offers a influential criticism of “religious morality” It is clear from his definition of religious morality that it is Voluntarism ( or a Divine Command Theory of Ethics) he has in mind. Smith states that the religious moralist has “assumed that just as the legal propriety of an action is established by showing it to emanates from an authoritative source, so also the moral propriety of an action must be established in the same way; the legal rightness has the same form as moral rightness, and may therefore be used to shed light on it.” He goes on to state “ ... Morality, on this view, is an affair of being commanded to behave in certain ways by some person who has a right to issue such commands; and once this premise is granted, it is said with some reason that only God has such a right” Smith’s critique then should be interpreted as a critique of Voluntarism.

Readers of this blog will know I have considerable sympathy for Voluntarism. I have defended it against some common objections in previous posts. So it will not suprise anyone that, despite the popularity of Smith’s essay, I think his criticisms fail. Here I wish to comment on two lines of argument he proposes.

1. One major contention Smith makes is that “religious morality is infantile” Smith’s thesis is that a Voluntarist possesses an ethical consciousness that is frozen or arrested at the pre-critical stage of a child. A mature adult whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly would have outgrown it.

In arguing for this thesis, Smith draws upon the theories of moral development proposed by Piaget. According to Piaget, children start out with a view of morality that Smith labels deontological, heteronomous and realist. Children view morality as obedience to certain rules (deontology) which hold because an authority figure, usually the parent, has promulgated them (heteronomous) and wrongdoing is perceived as any external action that violates these rules (realism). This view of ethics is appropriate for small children; however, as they mature and become more rational their consciousness changes. They begin to see the point of certain rules and understand the reasons behind them and the function of such rules. This is the stage where ethics become in Smith’s words “autonomous”. Instead of just accepting a parent’s word for it the child learns to figure these things out for him/herself.

Smith goes on to argue that these same features of heteronomy, realism and deontology are present in “religious morality” or, more specifically, Voluntarism. Consequently, Voluntarism reflects a childish way of viewing ethics, one not worthy of a grown-up, educated adult.

Smith’s analogy between Voluntarism and childish morality ignores a fundamental dis-analogy between the case Piaget describes and that of the divine/human relationship. As Richard Mouw has pointed out, Piaget views the transition from heteronomy to autonomy as corresponding to the time when a child begins to be on an increasingly-equal footing with his or her parents. The infantile stage of morality is appropriate while the child is in infancy because of its limited rationality and knowledge. In this state the child is unable to make decisions as competently as the adult, hence it relies on and defers to the judgement of adults. However, as the child grows equal to the parent in these respects he or she ceases to rely on parental judgement. He or she is now just as competent to answer these questions as his or her parent is and so his or her thinking becomes autonomous.

Consequently, Piaget’s model of development applies to situations where the subordinate is temporarily in a stage of inferiority to the authority but is undergoing a process of growth towards equality. It is when this equality is reached that the authority relationship is no longer appropriate. However, the relationship between adult humans and God is fundamentally different. Adults are not growing into divinity so that when mature they will equal God in rationality and knowledge. Rather, they are permanently in a state where they are inferior to God in these respects. In this context the failure to reach a moral consciousness that is equal to God’s is not a sign of arrested development and the infantile charge loses its sting. It is inappropriate for adults to behave like children but not inappropriate for them to fail to think like God.


2.Another argument Smith utilises appeals to the epistemic priority of moral principles over theological ones. Smith offers an argument that is “familiar to philosophers but of which the force is not always appreciated”. The argument essentially points out,

[W]e must be persuaded independently of his goodness before we admit his right
to command. We must judge for ourselves whether the Bible is the inspired word
of a kind and benevolent God or a curious amalgam of profound wisdom and gross
superstition. To judge this is to make a moral decision, so that in the end, so
far from morality being based upon religion, religion is based upon morality.

In Philosophical Problems and Arguments. James Cornman and Keith Lehrer express the same argument.

Consider what we would do if we read that Moses had returned with such
commandments as ‘make love to thy neighbor’s wife,’ ‘steal thy neighbor’s
goods,’ and ‘take advantage of thy parents.’ We would decide that what-ever was
revealed to Moses, it was not the will of God, because these are immoral
commandments. We do not justify that something is moral by showing it is God’s
will, because the only available way to evaluate conflicting claims about what
God wills is by finding which one is in accordance with what is moral.

This objection notes that in order to know whether a given action is, in fact, the type of thing God has commanded, one first needs to know whether the act is wrong. Therefore, ethics is prior to, and independent of, theology.

This objection again confuses the question of epistemological priority with the question of metaphysical independence. What these examples show is that we can know certain ethical truths prior to and independently of our knowledge of theological truths. However, it does not follow from this that deontic principles are metaphysically independent of, or non-identical to, theological ones. Consider the following analogy. In order to know that a clear liquid in front of me is water I need to examine its atomic structure to see if it is H20. It would not follow from this that water is not H20. Similarly, the fact that in certain contexts one needs to examine the moral appropriateness of commands to ascertain whether they are from God or not does not make it follow that wrongness is not the property of being contrary to God’s commands.