Part 6
Abstract: Modern intellectuals, especially those who base their world view upon science, pride themselves on being totally separate from the sphere of religion. They believe their view of the world to be based on empirical data and built up with reason alone, leaving them entirely distinct from all religion. This pride is unfounded. In fact their approach and conclusions are grounded in one of the major old- time religions, namely, paganism.
Many of the ideas, and probably all of the intellectual skills, that characterize the modern secular world were once integral parts of a way of life one of whose prominent features was the worship of idols. All of the Western world is built upon the foundation of paganism. Although paganism and Christianity were open rivals for hundreds of years, eventually they seemed to have made their peace. The truth is that the conflict moved underground, and paganism eventually triumphed so thoroughly that important characteristics of the ancient religious world are no longer familiar or even understood.
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The Rise of Pagan Thought in the Christian World
From the time that the humanists rediscovered the ancient classics until today (so far), the story of Western thought is the spread and adoption of the ideas, values and approaches that originated in the Greek and Roman authors, and the civilization that is built on those foundations as a development of them. Christianity and its modes of thought, which had dominated Western life for a thousand years, were slowly and gently, but very surely, set aside. In our times, the Greek and Roman pagan elements are dominant.
It is worth noting that Moslem and, to a lesser extent Jewish, thinkers throughout this period in which Christianity dominated Europe, preserved and developed certain works and ideas of classical philosophic thought even while Christian Europe largely ignored them. However, all their interest and their efforts were limited mainly to philosophic works. In general, they had no interest in literary and political work, which is the main content that we are trying to trace here.
Paganism was not a single system. It included many different beliefs. Yet it is clear that all of the specifically religious elements of classical pagan thought have been excised from the all that has formed the basis of modern life. None of the idol worship and ceremonies carries any weight today, nor has it for more than a thousand years. When the humanists returned to the study of the ancient authors, they never even considered the religious views of those works seriously. Yet even if the outward expressions that were favored in the ancient times were discarded, the attitudes and approaches that had brought forth those expressions were adopted.
Even if the classical learning as pursued in the Renaissance and thereafter had no explicitly religious character, the adoption of the Greek and Roman learning certainly had very important religious consequences and was, in the long run, disastrous for the Church. Though it no longer offered a competing religious system, the pagan approach to life was nonetheless profoundly hostile to Christianity. Even as the greatest Christian scholars embraced the advances that the pagan learning brought, the values and presuppositions of the pagan approach to life undermined the very foundations upon which the Christian way of life rested. It is like a massive building that sat next to a river. As the rising water level threatened it by flooding, the maintenance people were careful to build a levee to hold the waters back. Yet, unknown to them, the river was also gnawing away at its own banks, underwater, gradually wearing them away. Eventually the ground on which the building rested was so weakened that even the slightest additional strain caused a spectacular collapse.
In our days, Christianity (of all kinds: Protestant, Catholic, West and East) is still a very powerful social force but has very little impact on the intellectual life of the modern world, however broadly that concept may be defined. The energy of the churches is directed to social (and sometimes political) ends, with little impact on the ideas that dominate modern thought — which are basically secular ideas.
For a thousand years, from when the Roman Empire began its decline, the Church had dominated intellectual and cultural life in the West. Starting with the Renaissance, its position in these areas grew progressively weaker.
The humanists of the early Renaissance who revived the study of the pagan classics considered themselves, and were considered by others, devout Christians. Generally they felt that their discoveries would advance the cause of the Church. In the course of time, those who were steeped in the increasingly available pagan authors grew more and more critical of the Church and its doctrines. They criticized the behavior of the clergy (which was often eminently worthy of such criticism) and more importantly they also subjected the doctrines of the Church to deep analysis.
Eventually, the power of the pagan learning exploded in the Reformation which caused deep rifts within the Western Church and led to extensive religious warfare. Later it became even more dominant in the eighteenth century Enlightenment, when the dominant intellectual figures were openly hostile to religion. In both cases, the main characters were intimately and thoroughly familiar with the Greek and Roman classics.
Petrarch, who is regarded is one of the first Renaissance figures, was the first to view the ancient world seriously, on its own terms, after the thousand-year Christian hegemony. "He idealized, almost idolized, pagan antiquity, but he remained a Catholic Christian. He celebrated individualism but cherished tradition. He read ancient poems as they had been read in antiquity, in all their sensual worldliness, but he inflicted allegorical interpretations on them." He received honor as a poet but remained a pious pilgrim. (The Enlightenment, An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (volume 1), by Peter Gay, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1977, p. 271)
Though later observers marveled at the way such opposite and ultimately hostile notions could coexist in one person, the achievement does not seem to have been felt as such by Petrarch himself. It was only after the latent ideas had been played out and developed over several centuries that it became evident to scholars how opposed these notions really were.
End of Part 6
Part 5
