Notre-Dame Burning: reflection

We are all touched by the destruction of Notre-Dame cathedral I take this opportunity to register my sense of loss.That landmark has  always been important to me. I use it as the masthead for my apologetic website (the Religious a priori) for me its  a symbol of the intellectual heritage of the Christian tradition, I was Just watching  Christiane  Amanpour (PBS) Interviewing Simon Schama ( an English historian specializing in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history and French history. He is a University Professor of  History and Art History at Columbia University, New York.) In explaining what Notre Dame  means to the French, Schama said nothing about a religious aspect. It's not important to them, apparently,  that the building was a place of worship he only looked at the results, it's a place of peace and a place where the demands and stress of modern  life stop. One can contemplate peace and meaning. The building itself is a great work of art,We tend to think of it as permanent and unchanging but it has changed over the years,It has been destroyed or damaged before. I think this situation is symbolic of the overall relation of Christianity to modern western civilization. This real monument looms over modern life but no one notices it until it;s damaged, then they realize it's so important to them.

A good starting place for  modern western civilization is the medieval synthesis. With the fall of the Roman empire civilizing influences retreated and left the population of Western Europe in the cold and dark.. They huddled into castles for protection and sold themselves into surfdom to powerful landlords who evoked the Germanic inheritance laws to construct the feudal system. Eventually manufacturing began to produce cities and with cities came freedom from the feudal lord. Throughout these "dark ages" learning recede and was basically confined to a monastic setting. Monks kept alive the learning of the Greaco-Roman world. It was in this setting that modern science began. Discoveries plundered from Spain began to show up and scientific learning began among monks from Chartre in France to St. Victor in England to Helfta in Germany. These centers of learning produced vast bodies of literature, scientific observation, and a total synthesis bringing together the observations of science and religion into a coherent culture (see my essay on Christianity and science in the middle ages).[1]


As the work form the monasteries spread Western civilization embarked upon a Renaissance. New learning became the order of the day. Now the old view which was spread by atheist propaganda in the enlightenment told a mythical tail of humanity emerging form the dark abyss in which religion held it captive with chains of ignorance into the glorious light of materialistic scientism. But historians do not take this view seriously anymore. The Renaissence is no longer seen as the great awaking of learning. It is now under stood that the Renaissance was more of a movement than a time period and it is limited to the social elites in a few major cities such as Florence (although one might expand it more by the time of the Northern Renaissance). Most historians today begin thinking of modernity with the French  Revolution.[2]


At the same time historians are more aware of learning in the so called '"dark ages."[3]  The period from fall of Rome (about 490) to about 900 can be considered 'dark' in that it was dominated by illiteracy, Vikings and disease. But from 900 on a steady stream of learning, travel, new ideas begins and spread throughout Europe. The wars with the moors and the crusades were major forces contributing to this trend. The Renaissance,formerly understood as anti-religious saw 80% commisons on art as religious works. The Renaissance was not a rebellion against religion, it was the dawn of modern religious humaism.[4]

Christian thought contributed in a major way to the thinking of he enlightenment. most skeptics on the net tend to short hand the conflict between religion and science in the enlightenment and tend to assume that all the philosohpes were atheists. But in reality the philosophes were religious. Voltaire did not mean to say religion is just made up. He was not a Christian but he was profoundly religious. He really meant to say that religion is so important we would have to invent it if it didn't exist as a natural outgrown of the light of reason [5] One of the major influences was Father Francis Fenelon. He militated for individual rights and freedom and was a major influence upon the philosphes in their understanding of modern personhood and individuality (see Britanica, "Finelon"). Christian thinkers put an end to the Witch trials i Eruope and helped pave the way for an understanding of bsic human rights.[6]


The high point of this modern Christian contribution to western Civilization is the rise of modern science in England during the seventeenth century. The majority of historians in fields such as English history and History of science and history of ideas have come together to produce a ground swell of works demonstrating the importance of the Latitudinarians in popularizing and spreading the works of Newton. These English churchmen who were very active in politics took their marching orders form Robert Boyle. Of course Boyle, a major scientist of the era who discovered air pressure, was a close friend of Newton. Boyle's social vision was to use science to establish the truth of Christianity and then use Christianity to establish social and political harmony. Boyle latched on to Newtonian physics as the new model of science and the latitudinarians promoted it as a new Gospel. The major historian in all of this is Margaret Jacob and her major work on the subject is The Newtonians.[7] Jacob argues that without this band of preachers hawking Newton's wares he might have remained unknown for fifty years or longer than it took for him to be discovered. In it might not have ever had the currency it did have. Who knows this would have thrown off.

The next great high point was the abolition movement. I don't think we can underrate the exsnt to which abolition of slavery built the modern world. There is basically no way we could have moderity and live in a slave society. That would be anti-thetical to every modern principle from individual automy to democracy. At every step fo the way Christians led the movement. The Quakers organized and let the attack on the slave trade.The Journal of John Woolman is a must read in this regard. The underground rail road was mostly connected to chruches and the first oranized anti-abolition group in America was a group of Methodist women. From this point the Evanglicals fanned out accross the social specturm brining in the social gospel and militating on both sides of the political isle: Woman's sufferage, temporence, abolition of poverty, public education, and many others.[8]

All of this and much more is wrapped up for me in the symbol the building suggests to me, I can;t help but see the fire as an omen or a deeper symbol. White I find hopeful is the way the people of Paris came together to save what they could and to grieve as a community, To me that says the French are not ready to lose civilization. I think neither are we.



Sources


[1] Joseph Hinman "Christianity, Super nature, and the Rise of  Science in middle ages part 1," Doxa, website. http://www.doxa.ws/meta_crock/SN_science.html  (accessed 4/17/19)


[2] Steven Kreis, "Modern European Intellectual History," The History Guide (2016) 
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture1a.html (accessed 4/17/19)

[3] Peter Burke, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy , New York: Modern Library edition (April 9, 2002)
24
https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Renaissance-Modern-Library-Classics/dp/0375759263


[4] Ibid

[5] Peter Gay, the Enlightenment: The Rise of modern Paganism, New York?London" W.W. Norton, 1966,6=7

[6]Fénelon, Dialogue des Morts, "Socrate et Alcibiade" (1718), quoted in Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680-1715 (1967), pp. 282–83.

François Fénelon (6 August 1651 – 7 January 1715), 

[7] Margaret Jacob, The Newtonian and The English Revolution 1689-1720,Ithica: Cornell University Press 1976

[8]  William G. McLaughlin,  Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977  Chicago; University of  Chicago Press,1978,