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The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

Charles Freeman

4.05 · Rating details · 1,907 ratings · 113 reviews

A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine’s adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization.

When the Emperor Contstantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Ad ...more

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Paperback, 432 pages

Published December 18th 2007 by Vintage Books (first published August 28th 2002)

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Apr 11, 2009 Lobstergirl rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: those with fingernails

Shelves: own, ancient, religion, european-history

This book had been languishing on my shelf ever since I bought it in 2005. I think it was one of those broccoli books (which is really a misnomer since I freaking love broccoli)...books that you buy because they look like they'd be good for you rather than hedonistic romps. The Western Mind! Faith, Reason! It sounds like a mini-education!

It is - and the book was an absolute pleasure to read, hard to put down. Freeman seems to be some kind of "freelance" historian - like a Barbara Tuchman, I gues ...more

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May 07, 2011 Tim rated it did not like it

This book is a horrible travesty of historical reporting, but let me quote theologian David Bentley Hart who says it so well and with an appropriate amount of snark.

"Freeman's is the old familiar story that Christianity is somehow to be blamed for a sudden retrogression in Western civilization that set back the cause of human progress by, say, a thousand years. Along the way, Freeman provides a few damning passages from the church fathers (always out of context and without any mention of the pl ...more

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Sep 27, 2010 Erik Graff rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Christians

Recommended to Erik by: Jim DeVoto

Shelves: history

I was loaned this book by an old friend who at that time was a professor of the classics at Loyola University Chicago. Raised a Catholic in St. Louis and having gone to school at Holy Cross and Loyola as a student, first, of astronomy and then of the classics, he was--and is--not very sympathetic to Christianity. Indeed, he is downright hostile. The Closing of the Western Mind, a learned screed against the Church with an intentional reference to Bloom's infamous best seller of similar title, ple I was loaned this book by an old friend who at that time was a professor of the classics at Loyola University Chicago. Raised a Catholic in St. Louis and having gone to school at Holy Cross and Loyola as a student, first, of astronomy and then of the classics, he was--and is--not very sympathetic to Christianity. Indeed, he is downright hostile. The Closing of the Western Mind, a learned screed against the Church with an intentional reference to Bloom's infamous best seller of similar title, pleased him greatly enough to want to share the pleasure of it.

My own background was pretty much areligious. Mom was a nominal member of the Church of Norway, but except for some months in a Lutheran Sunday school with my best friend Larry Nolden around fourth grade, I was pretty ignorant of the whole religion business. And indeed, to the credit of our Sunday school teacher, attendance at basement classes while Larry's parents worshipped upstairs served more as an introduction to comparative world religions than as indoctrination. Dad, however, announced himself an unapologetic atheist when I finally got around to asking him about his own beliefs. Nobody in the family was religious so far as I could discern and when church was attended it was more for the sake of Norwegian tradition than an expression of any ideology. Basically, no one cared much one way or the other. My brother and I were free to attend any services we liked without criticism. Later, brother Fin, following in my footsteps, got involved in his best friend's church, a Greek orthodox one.

The world around us, however, seemed quite religious, quite Christian in fact, and when we moved from a rural housing development to upscale Park Ridge, Illinois, it seemed almost entirely Protestant and often evangelical--and Republican--at that.

Having had friends of all faiths--and races--while living in the country, the move to Park Ridge in fifth grade was quite upsetting. There I was introduced not only to Protestant enthusiasm, but also to anti-Catholicism, class prejudice and racism. There were Catholics in town, but they had their own schools and virtually their own neighborhoods. By high school, a disproportionate number of my friends were of Catholic backgrounds, though those who still "believed" were quite selective in their beliefs.

By the end of the sixties the New Left had penetrated even Park Ridge, many of my older friends being socialists of one sort or another. With the left also came the appeal of the broader counterculture, many peers and younger friends being freaks of one sort or another. Between the two groups, the political and the apolitical, there was much interaction, much openness. It was from among their number and from a freshman History of Civilization course taught by Kelly Fox that I became exposed to and increasingly interested in non-Western religions.

The first two years of college were devoted to study and politics, the politics often pushing the academics aside. Then, having to drop out for a year while facing draft evasion charges, I found myself with the time to read what I wanted. Thinking my character could use a lot of improvement and having had some rather challenging experiences with psychotropics led me towards the serious study of continental depth psychology and the works of C.G. Jung--a psychiatrist who seemed to know a lot about altered states of consciousness and to care a lot about religion.

Returning to college to find the politics now more subdued and inspired by my independent studies, I started taking psychology courses and even a two semester sequence on the bible taught by the Grinnell College chaplain. Dennis Haas, the bible professor, managed to get me enthusiastic about the new Religious Studies Department and to switch to that from the History Department, a change that led me to go straight to Union Theological Seminary in New York upon graduation.

Although the Religious Studies major in college and the subsequent M.Div. did not serve to make a Christian of me, they give me a bit of expertise and an abiding interest in the antique world and religions in general and in Christianity in particular. Consequently, Jim's recommendation of Freeman was well taken and the book thoroughly enjoyed.

This does not, however, mean that I buy into Freeman's arguments entirely. The ideology of Christianity need not be seen as inherently authoritarian, though its alliance with such a state in the fourth century has had that consequence.

Now my stepbrother has walked in for a planned dinner to be eaten together, so this will have to stop... ...more

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Jan 22, 2009 Markham Anderson rated it did not like it

Shelves: aborted

I actually stopped reading this halfway through. It was not for religious offense; I don't take that sort of offense.

Writing like this troubles me because the people I observe reading and acclaiming it are those who consider themselves intelligent, and yet it appears to me that they let themselves be completely persuaded by the writing, which I find insufficiently cogent.

As with Cahill's book, I was enrapt with the relation of the history, but I found the analysis so distasteful. The author repe ...more

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Aug 05, 2007 Lynn Weber rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

This was an incredible history of the transition from the classical world to the medieval world, centering in particular on the rise of Christianity within the context of an increasingly brittle, and thus authoritarian, Roman empire. One of the best nonfiction books I've ever read. In one poignant passage, Freeman talks about the first astronomical observations recorded in Greece in 585 BCE by Thales---the accurate prediction of an eclipse. The last astronomical observations in the classical wor ...more

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May 04, 2016 Falk rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, philosophy, history

Freeman’s main thesis revolves around the politization of Christianity in the late Roman empire and how monotheism eventually became an imperial tool. Regarding Constantine, he writes: “Outside Eusebius’ Life, there is virtually no evidence that suggests that Constantine knew anything much about Christ or even of the requirements for Christian living. His main concern may rather have been to ensure that the growing Christian communities supported his imperial rule, but, shrewd political leader t ...more

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Oct 01, 2009 Willowwind rated it it was amazing

A meticulously constructed discussion of how the rise of orthodox Christianity as a means of imposing social control in the crumbling Roman Empire led to the suppression of the classical tradition of rational and empirical inquiry, supplanting reason with faith. The result was a centuries long retreat from scientific discovery in Western culture, the effects of which we still feel today in the inability of many segments of the population to process scientific knowledge in favor of revealed belie ...more

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Oct 06, 2008 Art rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Late Antiquity History Buffs, Christians, Athiests

While I'm not completely convinced of the author's central argument--that the rise of Christianity and the waning of Greek intellectual tradition were not merely coincident, but that the former has a causal relationship with the latter--I have to say that this is an absolutely riveting history of early Christianity.

One thing I found particularly interesting is how much of what I'd considered fundamental tenets of Christianity had no basis in scripture but rather are the work of a small handful o ...more

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Apr 01, 2008 Dan rated it it was ok

My rating notwithstanding, this is a pretty good book. What it's not, though, is a book about how Christianity stifled intellectual thought in the western world. It's more a history of the development of orthodox Christianity (in a Nicene sense). And it's a good one. Just not what I was praying for. ...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Rob rated it really liked it

Best sentence of this 430 page book: "History suggests that conflicts between religions tend to be more destructive than those between scientists!" ...more

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May 04, 2020 Margot Tesch rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Wow. This was a bit of a marathon read. I left and came back to it several times. It was tough going but presented such fascinating arguments that I couldn't abandon it.
It begins with a wonderful summary and timeline of the early philosophers. Then it traces the development fo the christian ideology / theology and how the political and other religious influences played a part. Christians have been arguing since Christ about what it means to be a Christian and from my own personal experience as a ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Ray Francis rated it it was amazing

Christianity in 4th and 5th centuries had big problems: riven within by doctrinal disputes, disagreements about what implementing the Christian message meant, and on the outside political domination and interference from the Roman and Byzantine emperors. The famous councils of the time (such as Ephesus, Nicea, Chalcedon) tried to address these issues, but did so poorly. As the empire's grip on the Western part of the continent weakened, the stresses between what eventually became the Orthodox ch Christianity in 4th and 5th centuries had big problems: riven within by doctrinal disputes, disagreements about what implementing the Christian message meant, and on the outside political domination and interference from the Roman and Byzantine emperors. The famous councils of the time (such as Ephesus, Nicea, Chalcedon) tried to address these issues, but did so poorly. As the empire's grip on the Western part of the continent weakened, the stresses between what eventually became the Orthodox church in the east and the Roman Catholic church in the west led to a split that remains today. The western church suffered further problems: the texts it used (in Latin) came from poorly translated Greek. The early great thinkers of the Church (Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome among others) worked with poor quality texts. Jerome (famed for fluency in many languages) did much to try to fix this problem, but wound up being loathed in his own time for his troubles.

Looking at this problem led to looking more closely at the basic texts to see why there are so many doctrinal conflicts in early Christian thought. And the problems only increased from there: the first gospels (Mark or Matthew, depending upon whose analysis you take) did not appear until some time in the 2nd century). Which means that Paul wrote all of his influential work without any benefit of the gospels in written form. Additionally, Paul wrote his letters to communities for specific purposes in his specific time. Interestingly, none of the Christian communities survived long after Paul's death. Those place later became re-Christianized many years later. So the foundational documents of Christianity come from disparate sources, say different things, and support different objectives. The only solution the early church fathers could find was to seek recourse in faith. The other prevailing tradition in the area was Greek rational study. The church decided to make empirical thought, reasoned argument, and conclusions based on evidence its enemy. From the 5th century to Thomas Aquinas (himself considered heretical until just before his canonization in the 13th century), the church in both east and west made itself an enemy to other forms of thought in order to quell its own contradictions and conflicts and make it a better instrument of wielding political power.

The results of these approaches affect modern politics and religious thought today, and Freeman makes a very well researched and compelling case for how the closing of the western mind made for a lost era of human achievement of nearly 1500 years. ...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Rob Atkinson rated it really liked it

I found this more of a duty than a pleasure to read, but it does lay out the intellectual climate in the waning days of the Roman Empire more completely than any of the more general histories of the period I've read (such as the excellent "How Rome Fell: Death of an Empire" by Adrian Goldsworthy). It's essential reading for those who are interested in the end of the Classical tradition and the birth of the Medieval mindset in those turbulent days, and the role that the Empire's official adoption I found this more of a duty than a pleasure to read, but it does lay out the intellectual climate in the waning days of the Roman Empire more completely than any of the more general histories of the period I've read (such as the excellent "How Rome Fell: Death of an Empire" by Adrian Goldsworthy). It's essential reading for those who are interested in the end of the Classical tradition and the birth of the Medieval mindset in those turbulent days, and the role that the Empire's official adoption of Christianity played in that transition. That said, many lay readers are likely to find the intricacies of theological debate in the third to fifth centuries a fairly heavy slog, and these disputes make up the greatest share of the book. I would have appreciated more on the embattled last representatives of the pagan cults and classical philosophy to balance out the account, but perhaps the record is scant due to suppression of these 'heresies'; apparently many of the fathers of the church were enthusiastic book-burners. One of the last great thinkers in the old tradition, the brilliant female mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, was actually herself torn to pieces by a Christian mob. Amidst sectarian riots and vituperative charges of heresy made by bishops against bishops, Christian orthodoxy was gradually imposed by imperial fiat in an attempt to restore order, and dissenting theological opinion of any sort became dangerous to express. Most everything pre-Christian was regarded as pagan, and therefore anathema, excepting a narrow form of Platonism which was made useful in formulating Christian doctrine. A thousand year long tradition of rational inquiry, argument and experiment in philosophy and the natural sciences effectively ceased.
Fortunately for posterity, the Islamic invaders who conquered the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain soon thereafter were tolerant and included some deep and rational thinkers; they recognized the brilliance of the Greek tradition and saved many pre-Christian works since lost to the West, even making their own significant contributions to them over the centuries. Not until Thomas Aquinas' Scholasticism began to reconcile faith with objective reasoning in the early 13th century -- nearly another thousand years later -- would the Church begin to loosen its stranglehold on philosophy and science, allowing the surviving Greco-Roman intellectual legacy to re-enter Europe, in new Latin translations from the Arabic. ...more

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Nov 14, 2016 Stephie Iris Williams rated it liked it

This book is about how the dark ages came upon Europe with rise of Christendom; it is also about much more. Thomas Aquinas bookends the book, but it begins in earnest with the beginnings of Greek philosophy. After covering the development of Greek philosophy the book discusses the Hellenistic period which arose after Alexander the Great. This period runs from about 300 BC to 200 BCE. Within this period the Romans came to power, Christianity was founded with its the Jewish background, and its gro This book is about how the dark ages came upon Europe with rise of Christendom; it is also about much more. Thomas Aquinas bookends the book, but it begins in earnest with the beginnings of Greek philosophy. After covering the development of Greek philosophy the book discusses the Hellenistic period which arose after Alexander the Great. This period runs from about 300 BC to 200 BCE. Within this period the Romans came to power, Christianity was founded with its the Jewish background, and its growth is discussed. Then Constantine coming to power and Christianity becoming the state religion is presented. Within this period the bishops’ squabbling and Constantine’s attempt to bring them together through Church counsels is related. Finally, how both the Eastern and the Western Roman empires with Christianity having triumph over all of society is given. During all this statist period the wheedling out of reason and the firm grip of faith is described.

While I don’t believe Charles Freeman is a professional historian, meaning holding a Ph.D., which trains a person in using primary sources and some form or forms of historical methodology. I say some form(s) because there are many methodologies, some of which clashes, sometimes heavily. Anyway, Freeman does seem to make good use of secondary historical sources, which does not automatically disqualify one, providing a useful historical piece of writing. I found the book quite enjoyable, and I even learned some new stuff, having lost my notes I cannot recall them at the moment, but given the appropriate associations they would probably surface again.

I could definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in how the dark ages descended upon Europe. While Freeman doesn’t seem to use much primary historical sources in the book, I do feel that he provides good information and supportive evidence for how the dark ages developed. For those of the evangelical Christian persuasion they might find it useful in having exposed the poverty of reason in some Christian’s minds.
...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Mike Clinton rated it really liked it

Freeman does a fine job of balancing the history of ideas and institutions with human stories of the events that influenced them. He has a thesis composed of several elements woven together to historicize the emergence of Christian thought during the transitional period between the late classical and the early medieval eras. He examines how the configuration of power, ideas, and historical actors produced a culture that privileged faith and renounced empirical rational thought, effectively dista ...more

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Jul 01, 2018 Andrea rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nf-religion, nf-history, nonfiction

Loved this. The author does a great job of tracing the threads of classical philosophy and inquiry from their Greek foundations and seeing how they grew and were co-opted, altered, and suppressed throughout the political and religious turmoil of the late Roman empire and the early Middle Ages. The path is not a straightforward one; in the epilogue, he comments, "It is simplistic to talk of the Greek tradition of rational thought being suppressed by Christians." Rather, he stresses the way the Ch ...more

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Aug 19, 2018 Mike rated it really liked it

Freeman tries to determine why in the early days of the Christian church the Greek intellectual tradition was suppressed. The author discusses early church fathers (Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo, for example) and their attempts to consolidate church doctrine (which at the time was varied and messy) which led to the discarding of rational thought and discourse. It was not until a thousand years later when Thomas Aquinas showed up that the veil of unintellectual thinking was lifted.
Why a ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Konstantin Yegupov rated it it was amazing

The only downside is that the book is a bit too long.

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Apr 04, 2018 Arturo Castillo rated it it was amazing

Isahia 29:14
"... for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent menshall be hid."

Also,

1 Corinthans 1:19
_For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”_

Wisdom or Sophia was how any science was known in biblical times. Add ambitious Christian fundamentalists and there you have it. The conflict between faith and reason or the closing of the Western mind. Beautiful book! ...more

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Mar 31, 2015 Greg Minshall rated it really liked it · review of another edition

i liked this book a lot. however, the author doesn't, to my mind, prove his thesis, which is that the adoption of Christianity in Europe and around the Mediterranean during the first 5 or so centuries of the current era caused "the closing of the western mind". however, the author definitely provided evidence pointing in that direction (and no evidence that i saw that would contradict that assertion).

i think the main lesson i derived from this book is about how rational thinking (the scientific i liked this book a lot. however, the author doesn't, to my mind, prove his thesis, which is that the adoption of Christianity in Europe and around the Mediterranean during the first 5 or so centuries of the current era caused "the closing of the western mind". however, the author definitely provided evidence pointing in that direction (and no evidence that i saw that would contradict that assertion).

i think the main lesson i derived from this book is about how rational thinking (the scientific method, etc.) should relate to religious/spiritual beliefs. the author states that during pagan time (Greek, early Roman), rational thinking and beliefs about gods, miracles, etc., were siblings, if you were, sitting side by side, with one having little effect on the other. the Christian era (for mainly political/economic reasons, it appears from this book) placed rational thinking in a position of subservience to religion. while the author doesn't discuss modern atheism in any detail, i'd say a problem with modern atheism (Dawkins, whose book i have only seen discussed in reviews, etc.) is that it attempts to place religion in a position of subservience to rational thinking. neither of these seems to work.

the relationship of Christianity to rational thinking is further complicated by the fact that the founding documents of the Christian religion (the gospels, letters by Paul, and oral tradition) are probably mutually contradictory. in math, if you assume that you can divide by zero, you can prove "anything"; probably, in rhetoric, if you assume two mutually contradictory assertions to be simultaneously true, you can likewise prove anything to be true. (possibly, though, this is just an effect of the size of the corpus; Hebrew scholarship, as well as Marxian theoretizing, are possibly likewise characterized by the ability to prove anything from the Talmud or Das Kapital.)

though i didn't read this book in order to learn about early Christian church history, in fact i *did* learn very much about that subject, which i found very interesting. i'm glad i read this book.

one nit: i read this book on my Kindle "paperwhite". the citations in the text to footnotes were *not* active, so i had to constantly engage in clumsy fingering to read the footnotes. (i found the footnotes to be a very useful supplement to the main text.) ...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Andi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, religion, non-fiction, books-i-own

Many books dealing with Catholic Church history present the lineage of the Church and the internal conflicts, largely revolving around doctrine and organization, of its members. Little attention is paid to the larger political climate in which these conflicts are set. The Closing of the Western Mind looks at the history through this missing political dimension and provides a fuller explanation as to the "whys" in Church history.

While the title is somewhat cynical, the body of the text is less so Many books dealing with Catholic Church history present the lineage of the Church and the internal conflicts, largely revolving around doctrine and organization, of its members. Little attention is paid to the larger political climate in which these conflicts are set. The Closing of the Western Mind looks at the history through this missing political dimension and provides a fuller explanation as to the "whys" in Church history.

While the title is somewhat cynical, the body of the text is less so. Freeman’s central theme is that "the Greek intellectual tradition was suppressed rather than simply faded away." However, he also notes that this was not the end of the story, calling Gregory the Great "one of the greatest spiritual leaders the west has ever produced, not least in terms of his restoration of moderating and moral integrity to the Christian tradition after the obsessional ascetic narcissism and destructive invective of the fourth and fifth centuries." He also praises Thomas Aquinas as brilliant and credits him with the restoration of "the power of words and independent thinking [which] were once again given a status that they had almost lost."

As for his thesis, I cannot argue with his position. It is a bizarre history in which a Jewish movement, fueled by opposition to Roman rule, becomes a political tool used by said Roman government to (try to) achieve unity in order to better establish authority in hopes of protecting the state. The real irony comes with the revelation that it was the Roman emperors, in hopes of creating a unified state, that drove (and often directed) what is now considered Orthodox Christian doctrine and not the Church itself. Moreover, this orthodoxy has been presented as being timeless and largely dismisses the events that led up to its creation.

On a side note, I find it fortunate that the Arabs assimilated much of Greek culture into their own as they conquered northern Africa and the Middle East, for it would likely be lost to us otherwise...and, that Islam showed a tolerance for other religions at a time when Christianity did not.
...more

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Sep 19, 2012 James Lindsay rated it it was amazing

So I gave this book five stars, which is a little bit inaccurate, but I can't give it the score I want of 4.5 stars. I'm taking away from the otherwise perfect rating I would give this book for the overwhelmingly dry nature of the reading, particularly through the first third or so. Indeed, I almost didn't make it past that part. The middle third is quite good, though, and the last third is entertaining but repetitive, documenting the apparently incessant squabbling that characterizes the format ...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Tom rated it liked it

The oft-addressed description of Constantine I's toleration, and part-time aggrandizement, of paganism stands out as the shiniest gold in The Closing of the Western Mind, the insinuation being that the first Christian Emperor of Rome publicly embraced his monotheism as an astute but insincere political expedient.

It remains a fact that he never abdicated the title of Pontifex Maximus, the spritual head of the polytheistic cult of the empire, nor did he decorate Constantinople with any particularl ...more

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May 26, 2013 Darius rated it really liked it

Presents a detailed account of the early church, with a focus on the centuries when the Roman empire turned to Christianity (and effectively committed suicide).

I didn't find any surprises because I already knew some of this at a summary level: how the early church fathers abandoned debates about reality and chose all sorts of essentially un-resolvable (and thus anti-intellectual) debates; how these bishops relied on state power to push their own viewpoints and have their opponents declared as h ...more

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Jul 07, 2009 Vince rated it it was amazing

Finally finished this. I'll have to blog a longer review, but the short answer is that I found it completely fascinating, and made me even more interested in reading about the history of the early Christian church.

Tertullian, Origen, Jerome, St. Paul, St. Augustine... what a fun bunch of fellows. It's bizarre that the personal biases (authoritarianism, hostility towards sex/procreation, profound distrust of human knowledge) of one man (St. Paul) had such a huge effect on the development of Weste ...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Jim added it

How the Christian tradition formed over the centuries, driven by Greek philosophy, politics, and personalities of Christian bishops more so than by the words and actions of an historical Jesus. Much of the content of this book is probably well-known to most graduates of reputable seminaries, but completely unknown to most Christian laypersons. Freeman focuses in particular on how the Greek pre-scientific traditions of logic and reason were co-opted and inverted by Christianity as bishops gained ...more

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Sep 16, 2011 Michael rated it really liked it

This is a fascinating account of the beginnings of Christianity. Thoroughly documented and footnoted, it's real eye-opener. Not an easy read but worth the work to achieve a clearer picture of how the basic beliefs of Christianity were established, often at the behest of the political authority. I recommend it strongly to students of religious history and anyone who feels they already have a full understanding of the genesis (forgive the pun) of their belief system. Additionally, it's a fine caut ...more

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Sep 05, 2009 Kelly rated it really liked it

This is a thorough and fascinating history that is admittedly offered in the service of a particular argument. Charles Freeman has some ideas and his effort is here expended to prosecute (and defend) these ideas; as such, the book may not convince every reader, but it is certainly a welcome provocation for inquiring minds. Happily, he confidently delves into the abstruse theological debates of Christian antiquity – God, as it turns out, is in the details. There is dense scholarship here, which i ...more

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May 03, 2009 Christopher rated it really liked it

A great examination of how contemporary Christian doctrine (of most kinds) was shaped by the politics and mores surrounding the variety early Greek christians and the waning Roman Empire. Reason and philosophy and inquiry, which were hallmarks of civilization, were actively discouraged for over 1000 years until the Renaissance.

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Sep 10, 2018 Luke rated it liked it

This book is a nice rehash of Edward Gibbon's views on Christianity in "The Decline and Fall of the Rome Empire". It begins with the open-minded pagan Greeks, but within just over a hundred pages has moved on to Constantine the Great granting state toleration to Christianity and from there rapidly to the Christian book burners under Theodosius II where it spends its remaining 250 pages arguing about theological niceties until roughly the the time of Charlemagne.

What does it get right? It is at This book is a nice rehash of Edward Gibbon's views on Christianity in "The Decline and Fall of the Rome Empire". It begins with the open-minded pagan Greeks, but within just over a hundred pages has moved on to Constantine the Great granting state toleration to Christianity and from there rapidly to the Christian book burners under Theodosius II where it spends its remaining 250 pages arguing about theological niceties until roughly the the time of Charlemagne.

What does it get right? It is at times a racy account of bullying bishops and malevolent monarchs. It draws out the co-dependence between Roman state and church in later antiquity. It focuses on the interlinkages between imperial approved doctrine at councils such as Nicea and the official versions of church doctrine (including differences between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity) that last to this day. It also makes the distinction between the separation of church and state in the West, but not in the East, something which we still see in Russia where state religion and ideology have had a massive impact on politics. And finally, it emphasises how parties have often used accusations of heresy to gain material and political benefit.

Where doesn't it get it right? It generally misrepresents the style of Greco-Roman intellectual thought. Rather than Plato being an aberration for focusing on abstract reasoning as opposed to Aristotle's experimentation, Plato was very much the norm. The Greek mindset is much more math oriented than science oriented- if you read the original works of the Pre-Socratics or Epicureans (including the Roman Lucretius), far more emphasis is given to reasoning based off the binary distinction between being and void than any kind of empirical observation. As much mathematical style thinking was devoted to underpinning Epicurean ethics and for pure maths as to Greek advances in physics which benefitted the general population i.e. Archimedes screw. It is therefore unsurprising that Greek thought ended in something like Neoplatonism which, though mystic in style, is very logically argued by Plotinus.

In short, the Greco-Roman world was not a bastion of reason as we would understand it, but rather a highly intellectual world on the edge of reason- probably a close analogy in the modern era to Greek thought would be the work of Newton (the "last of the magicians"), or of Georg Cantor and his work on infinities.

Crucially, there was not the link between the intellectual structure and scientific prosperity that exists in the modern era. Somewhere between the invading tribes, recurrent plagues and imperial assassinations from the third century onwards, a good deal of artistic and intellectual talent was lost, and was not seen to need to be recovered. That which remained did not ignore reason, as seen by the struggles of assorted councils to rationalise the human and divine natures of Christ. It just saw reason as subservient to faith.

Instead of faith over reason, I would argue it was the increasing political power of the church that contributed more to the downfall of Rome. After all, for much of the Republican Roman period, Rome had little intellectual tradition to boast of. Only as more an more resources were lavished on religion and state ceremony as opposed to defense and farming did Rome decay, to be replaced by another power focused on religion, that of the Islamic Empire. ...more

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About Charles Freeman

Charles Freeman

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Charles Freeman is a freelance academic historian with wide interests in the history of European culture and thought. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Egypt, Greece and Rome, Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. He has followed this up with The Greek Achievement (Penguin 1999), The Legacy of Ancient Egypt (Facts on File, 1997) and The Closing of the Western Mind, a study of the rela ...more

Books by Charles Freeman

Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean

A. D. 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State

The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World

Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe

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“In his play Antigone, Sophocles summed it up: Wonders are many and none more wonderful than man . . . In the meshes of his woven nets, cunning of mind, ingenious man . . . He snares the lighthearted birds and the tribes of savage beasts, and the creatures of the deep seas . . . He puts the halter round the horse’s neck And rings the nostrils of the angry bull. He has devised himself a shelter against the rigours of frost and the pelting rains. Speech and science he has taught himself, and artfully formed laws for harmonious civic life . . . Only against death he fights in vain. But clear intelligence—a force beyond measure— moves to work both good and ill . . . When he obeys the laws and honors justice, the city stands proud . . . But man swerves from side to side, and when the laws are broken, and set at naught, he is like a person without a city, beyond human boundary, a horror, a pollution to be avoided.29 The” — 2 likes

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