In
Why You Think the Way You Do, Glenn Sunshine traces the history and evolution of western worldviews "from Rome to Home." His interest "is in the fundamental ideas that shaped the culture and how those ideas were lived out in Western society" and "with the impact Christianity had on worldviews and thus on culture." A summary follows.
"A worldview is the framework you use to interpret the world and your place in it." Worldviews operate "below the radar, behind the scenes, guiding our thoughts, words, and actions and only rarely being examined or analyzed." And "to understand a culture or civilization, you have to understand its wordview."
Ancient Rome
Rome had a variety of religions, most of which were pagan. Its pantheon was ever-growing as it would absorb the deities of those it conquered. Most of its gods were "feared, not loved." "Religious rituals were designed to appease deities, not please them." In this era, Plato and his teachings had a huge role. In Platonism, "ideas are the foundation for reality, [so] clear thinking and logic are the best approaches to understanding the world." It wasn't about observation but logic. He believed that "spirit was superior to matter" and had a hierarchy of being that started with the One ("a being of pure spirit"), from whom all other deities came. (Humans were down on the list, but above animals and plants.) Aristotle (also influential) would follow suit in his logic over observation approach.
Within the Empire, Jews had a different deity. "The God of Israel . . . is personal and created the world as a voluntary act." And "God created humanity in his image as his steward and regent in overseeing the rest of the created world." Eventually, a Jewish sect—Christianity—would arise that held the same beliefs (plus others, obviously, including holding Jesus as Lord and Savior). Christians claimed that their God was alone the only God—an exclusivity claim that didn't go over well in a pluralistic society. They would be persecuted for centuries . . . until Constantine.
The Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, making Christianity a legal religion. He is said to have converted himself. And "the transition from being a persecuted minority religion to being the favored faith of the emperor inevitably forged ties between church and state that have been a driving force in Western political life ever since." And when the Western Roman Empire collapsed in 476, the church—often the only administrative unit left in a city—would fill the vacuum.
Medieval World
The church and state influenced each other after Constantine. After Rome fell, a "blending of Germanic and Roman cultures with Christianity . . . occurred across the board in all areas of life during these centuries. The different strands influenced each other and gradually blended together to form a new worldview . . " Little survives from that time (hence "Dark Ages"), though of course development continued in many spheres. Platonic humanism arose, and around this time, the works of Aristotle were (re)discovered, leading to scholasticism (a method of study). People viewed it as "safer and more reliable to build our understanding of the world on the base of ancient authorities." But this had its issues, too, and the Condemnations of 1277 "liberated thinking from its slavish dependence on Aristotle." Ultimately,
The medieval mind assumed that the rational God created a rational universe and that human beings, made in the image of God, were rational as well and could undersatnd the universe. Although they believed that miracles could occur, they also believed that God idd not need to intervene actively for the world to function normally. God created it to operate in a certain way, and the rules that governed its behavior could be discovered by human investigation. Contrary to the assumptions of classical thinkers . . . the best method of learning about the world was not deductive reasoning but direct study and examination fo the world . . [which] laid the foundation for [science].
Christian thoughts influenced other spheres of worldview, too. Ideas that the physical world was real, it and work were inherently good, and property rights were important, all came from the Bible. Augustine, an important thinker of the period, developed ideas of the "City of God" (based on love of God and neighbor) and "City of Man" (based on love of self) which explained the good (and evil) in the world and how society could function with both being true.
"Starting in the late 1400s, however, Europe was jolted by a series of movements and discoveries that threatened the underlying pillars of medieval thought. The Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the European discovery of the Americas, and the rediscovery of an ancient form of skepticism set the stage for momentous changes in the European worldview."
Renaissance, Reformation, and the New World
Based in part on a calamitious fourteenth century (which included "economic decline, continent-wide crop failures, the Hundred Years War, . . . [and] the Black Death"), some "began to argue that Rome was the epitome of civilization, and when Rome fell, civilization ended." They were obsessed with classical civilization (Greece and Rome), but still drew a lot of their approach from medieval times. Like the era that preceded them, they believed "that truth existed and could be known with certainty. They also believed (obviously) that the best guide to truth was the past, and that a unified system of truth could be found by studying past authors, aiming at a grand synthesis of all human knowledge." But they encountered a problem: as they studied the past, Renaissance thinkers found that the scholars of bygone eras didn't agree. This was on problem in the time (more on this below).
Another challenge was the Protestant Reformation. They looked to the Bible as the sole authority (and not the Papacy or tradition) and "insisted that all believers are priests" (and thus elevated 'secular' roles to being sacred callings, too). In some cases, "the lines between civil and ecclesiastical functions blurred," which could mean enforcing moral standards. The rise of competing churches made people question which was right, and religious wars followed (to include the English Civil War and the Thirty Years' War). Those horrific experiences led people to start questioning if we could truly be certain of religion . . . or anything.
Finally, the discovery of the New World challenged peoples' worldview as it raised troubling questions about God and the Bible (because how could Native Americans, having not been exposed to the Gospel for centuries, possibly be saved?). This, plus the above issues and the discovery of an ancient thinker, Pyrrho (who claimed that knowing anything with certainty was impossible), further stressed the worldview.
Scientific Revolution, Deism, and Enlightenment
A slew of thinkers arose (Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and Newton among others) who "used both science and Scripture" in their investigations and debates. Collectively, these "laid the foundation for a new epistemology in Europe." "Although the past was respected, scholars increasingly believed that they could build on and improve on past authors, and even prove them wrong. The ancients were no longer 'authorities' but merely people who wrote down ideas that might be right or wrong. Study, analysis, and, where possible, testing became more important than simply citing Aristotle. In short, the idea of progress emerged, and with it, a greater optimisim about human potential." The Christian underpinning remained (a rational God made a rational world that we as rational creatures can understand), which still left "room for supernatural intervention," but a shift was coming.
In the early seventeenth century, there was a shift to looking for exclusively rational explanations of the world, and "a similar trend toward reason occurred in religion." In addition, "many people began to think of religious passions as politically and socially dangerous." A new worldview called deism arose.
In traditional/orthodox Christianity, God was understood to be infinite, creator/sustainer of the universe, transcendent yet immanent/personal and relational. Deists believed some of this . . . to them, "God is infinite but not personal; he is creator but the universe operates on its own without any involvement by God; and he is transcendent but not immanent." Deists "believed that reason was the only guide to turth in any area of life, including religion." They respected the ethics in the Bible but "did not accept its miracles, answered prayers, and interventionist view of God."
In other areas, reason also took precedence. In economics, politics, philosophy, and other areas, "knowledge came exclusively from human reason and could be expected to grow and improve over time, based on the further accumulation of experience." The "material world was the only one that mattered." They still had some underlying Christian influence, however, like "the idea of inalienable, God-given rights, which led to the Enlightenment emphasis on life, liberty, property, and virtue." And the idea of original sin was retained (especially in America), leading to our founders establishing a government with checks and balances since humans are so easily corrupted. But things were still changing, and modernity was coming.
Modernity
Our modern worldview came about in the nineteenth century. Many were functionally deistic, and in that view, God was only there to create the universe. "If another alternative can be found to explain how the universe got here, we can safely eliminate God from the system altogether." In that case, what we would be left with was "a world consisting only of matter and energy—a metaphysical system known as naturalism or materialism."
Related is the idea of what science is. It used to mean simply knowledge, but now came to refer to only studies that followed the scientific method. "Now only things that could be tested and confirmed through the scientific method qualified as real knowledge; everything else was dismissed as subjective or irrelevant." Given some successes in the natural sciences, this gave rise to "the attempt to apply the scientific methods to solve social problems" in many other fields of study.
Enter Charles Darwin. His theories lent credence to the naturalistic position, though (interestingly) "Darwinism is not itself subject to the scientific method any more than anything in history is. The past is over; you cannot revisit it, observe it, test it, or experiment on it. All you can do is look at the surviving evidence and try to make sense of it." Ultimately, this shows that "Darwinism is not a scientific theory but a worldview assumption, and as such, it is not falsifiable." It is an article of faith that serves as a presupposition, and it along with materialism had broad implications for other fields.
What about meaning in life? The materialistic worldview "disenchanted" the world. "Materialism provides a ready answer to the question of the meaning or purpose of life: there is none." This leads to nihilism, but since that is hard for most to stomach, more people week to "re-enchant" and embraced existentialism ("nihilism-lite"), which "means that we are radically free to determine what we do and who we are." Things matter—because we say so (since we have rejected other authorities).
Postmodernism
Two horrific World Wars and other calamities in the twentieth century led people to re-think a purely materialistic view. Maybe there is right and wrong . . . but if there is some truth out there that cannot be scientifically proven . . . how do we learn it? Enter deconstructionism—in literature, that is "the idea that texts can be deconstructed and reconstructed as suits the reader." That can be applied to other things, too. If knowing is impossible, we can at least make our own meaning. Postmodern thought "is deconstructionism-lite," rejecting objective truth and insisting on cultural/moral relativity, but holding to "the idea that truth is relative and personal."
Hence we arrive at present day. "You alone decide what is true and false, right and wrong, for yourself. The only limitation is that you can do nothing that infringes on someone else's freedom." The greatest virtue in such a system? Tolerance. "Not only can you not do anything that limits another's freedom . . . you cannot suggest that there is anything wrong with what they decide to do with their freedom." And not only can you not criticize another, but competing views "must be positively affirmed and celebrated." Which leads to all manner of things, including self-determination of identity, gender, and so on. Where are we now? In many ways, back at Rome, with many of their cultural practices and values being embraced in the public square.
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At only 215 pages, this book obviously only skimmed the surface of worldviews and how they have changed over the centuries. That said, it is an excellent work. Sunshine writes well and has a gift for explaining things succinctly and clearly. While I would have preferred some more exploration of the nuances associated with each period, I appreciate that this is intended to be an introduction only. In that, it succeeds. Highly recommended for those interesting in learning more about "how we got here."
Rating: A
