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

by Charles Freeman (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Pimlico; New edition edition (1 May 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 071266498X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0712664981
  • Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.2 x 4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 148,407 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

The conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in 368 AD brought a transformation to Christianity and to western civilization, the effects of which we still feel today. Previously, the Roman empire had absorbed and sustained the Greek intellectual tradition which, in the astronomy of Ptolemy, the medicine of Galen and the philosophy of Plotinus, reached new heights. Constantine turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. The century after Constantine's conversion saw the development of an alliance between church and state which stifled freedom of thought and the tradition of Greek rationalism which was intrinsic to it. The churches enjoyed enormous patronage and exemptions from tax, and in return allowed the emperors to take on the definition and enforcement of an increasingly narrow religious orthodoxy. This book explores how the European mind was closed by the revolution of the fourth century. It looks at the rise of the 'divine' monarch, the struggle as Christianity painfully separated itself from Judaism, the conflict between faith and reason, and the problems in finding any kind of rational basis for Christian theology. In these centuries, a turning-point for Western civilisation, we see the development of Christian anti-Semitism, the origins of the opposition of religion and science and the roots of Christianity's discomfort with sex, issues which haunt the Christian churches to this day. The Closing of the Western Mind is a major work of history. Wide-ranging and ambitious, its central theme is the relationship between the two wellsprings of our civilisation, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman, and how the tensions between them have created the culture in which we continue to live, think and believe.


From the Publisher

A radical and stimulating 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 civilisation. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A excellent exposure of Chististian early history, 18 Nov 2003
By A Customer
I really liked this book. Written from the perspective of a historian (rather than, say, a theologian), it traces the radical change in outlook of western culture between the fall of the Roman Empire and the replacement of much of its former authority by new church structures. Among the most interesting elements is his treatment of how the Emperors (both Roman and Byzantian) used the church for their own political ends, but were in turn used by the church - a relationship that approached symbiosis, but again not without its traumas and conflicts as well.

The author also does an excellent, and in my view very fair, appraisal of the early church philosophers and movements. He neither idolizes nor vilifies such early bastions of Christianity as Augustine, and even the crisis over the Arian heresies (to modern eyes both tragic and farcial) are treated carefully. Overall the book doesn't paint the prettiest of pictures of the early church, and certainly exposes how many of the dogmas that one would think (if you have a Catholic or Othodox background at least) have been eternal but in fact owe most of their existnace to 3rd or 4th century politics than they do any divine revelation.

Top marks from me, and a very fulfilling read for anyone interested in late classical or early medieval history, as well as *everyone* interested in Christian theology.

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Revealing the myth of development of Christianity, 19 Sep 2002
This review is from: The Closing of the Western Mind (Hardcover)
This is a deeply interesting book that is detailed, well researched by very readable. It deals with the often deeply negative (and occaisionally positive) effect that Christianity had upon thought and ideas in the the late Roman Empire (hence the title) and much of Western thought to the present day, The author does this through examining what key figours had to say including Ambrose, Jerome (a serioudsly strange man in my view) and Augustin. Of particular interest is the often hidden/forgotten views of the late paganists and, so-called, heretics. Paganism took a lot longer to die out than early Christian historians would have us believe. Well worth reading for beleivers and non believers alike.
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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Warning From The Past, 7 Feb 2006
By J. Mark Moore "catapan" (Hartford, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
In the current climate, Charles Freeman is to be greatly applauded for providing what is possibly one of the most shocking and thought-provoking books around today. At a time when a later rational, progressive and tolerant civilisation is again confronted by the self-righteous, ugly, irrational and vicious face of faith it is indeed cautionary to read this account of how the open enquiring Classical mind of Greece and Rome was converted into the closed, aggressive and crass certitudes of early Christianity. It begs perhaps the most despairing question that any society can ask: is history repeating itself?

For a society like ours that has passed through the infernal, infantile and bestial beatitudes of Christianity into the tolerant openness of modern secularism, this book is indeed a warning from the past. The warning is clear: science and secularism is the way forward; faith and religion is the way to Hell.

Perhaps the saddest thing in this book is the letters from late-imperial pagan senators and philosophers writing to various emperors pleading for tolerance, equal opportunity, fair dealing and a level playing field in the face of the Christian triumphal mind-vice. They made the serious error of imagining that their Christian opponents were as decent and progressive and tolerant and open-minded as they were. That was a bad and extinction-causing mistake. Let us not now make the same mistake again.

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