I fully understand that religious views change through time, but I think that has much more to do with outside influences.
Sorry, but I’m going to have to side with @Mervin_Bitikofer when he says you have a breath-taking misunderstanding of theism, and generally, the history of theism as well. You wrote this:
The Christian church supported divine right and Christian theocracies during that time. If the Enlightenment views of secular law with an abolishment of divine right and theocracies was the Christian view, why didn’t we see it over that time period? This should have been the way those Christian societies ruled themselves throughout that time period if it was truly the system Christianity leads to.
Of course, to take this as a rebuttal, you would need to think that Christians are some theologically homogenous group that can’t lead to different interpretations in different periods, obviously refuted by the numerous sects that exist today. The Reformation, Enlightenment are both products of their contemporary history and much religious debate. As Jonathan demonstrated, the separation of church and state itself derives from Christians with religious motivation. He has also now clearly pointed out that, as should be clear, the Enlightenment ethics are indebted to Judeo-Christian culture.
The views of Christians were not influenced by their readings of Greek philosophers and ideas about democracy coming in from outside of Christiandom?
Like I said, should we say that Christianity was responsible for the invention of golf simply because it emerged in Europe?
Divine Right also derived from Christians with religious motivations. It would seem that the contemporary history independent of Christian theology had a very strong role to play with respect to views on politics and institutions in European history. When so many views on government and the role of the church in government exist within Christiandom, how can you pick just one and say that this one view is the product of Christianity?
The views of Christians were not influenced by their readings of Greek philosophers and ideas about democracy coming in from outside of Christiandom?
You’ve already asked that. And that remains to remarkably have little relevance with the values of the Enlightenment. Democracy can be attributed to the Greeks, though the U.S. is a republic, not a democracy. And our democracy is certainly different from the Greek one. Anyhow, the point has been skipped over. The values, once again, have been shown to come from Judeo-Christian thinkers with Judeo-Christian motivations. Divine Right is a separate issue and a red herring to any discussion of the origins of Enlightenment value. Questions like “why did X occur Y years after Z?” is simply indefensible and requires a breathtaking misunderstanding of the history of Europe.
EDIT: @Realspiritik has made an important addition to the point of Divine Right.
I’m sure you probably know this, but just to be clear . . . the Divine Right of kings and emperors extends back at least 5,000 years to most early civilizations that have shown technological and philosophical sophistication (e.g. assorted cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica). It’s not a Christian thing. It’s a status addiction thing. In other words, it derives from status addicted brains that can’t think of any better way to get their status points than to claim they get their authority straight from gods/God/Universal Source.
I’m sure you probably know this, but just to be clear . . . the Divine Right of kings and emperors extends back at least 5,000 years to most early civilizations that have shown technological and philosophical sophistication (e.g. assorted cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica). It’s not a Christian thing. It’s a status addiction thing. In other words, it derives from status addicted brains that can’t think of any better way to get their status points than to claim they get their authority straight from gods/God/Universal Source.
The emperor cult of ancient Rome is an excellent example of this. But there are recent examples of leaders claiming special divine status or special status as saviours of their people. And you know what? Many of them aren’t even Christian! (The “specialness” part tends to be a clue that severe narcissism is the real motivating factor for these leaders.)
Well, sure; “outside influences” are going to be huge. I don’t think anybody here is claiming that it was Christianity, and Christianity alone that produces things like enlightenments or science (or golf ). In fact, even teasing apart what is “Christian influence” or what is from “outside” may be quite a formidable trick, aside from some obvious things such as noted by @Realspiritik such as that the “divine rights of Kings” has a pedigree that predates Christianity or even Judaism by quite a bit --not to say that those theisms didn’t in their own seasons give indulgent sanction to such cultural habits. But the point here is that there was a considerable influence both ways between culture and religion (…again, to the dubious extent the two can even be separated). And there seems to be good historical warrant for thinking the Christian influences did much to incubate and cultivate our current political ideals and scientific methodologies. It isn’t a clean proof of cause and effect where controls were in place to eliminate all other potential influences. Because in fact nobody here is denying all those other influences. History is messy. It isn’t a physical sciences experiment and never will be.
[edited for clarity]
[I guess golf may well predate our current theisms too since it was Bandobras Took (from ancient Hobbit folklore) who may have invented the game at the battle of Golfimbul when Took knocked Golfimbul’s head clean off and it went down a rabbit hole.]
Not entirely true, since church and state always had a fragile relationship. Belief in the divine right of kings was a two edged sword, since it was often appealed to by kings to claim that they had divine authority independent of the church. Consequently, the medieval era was full of power struggles between church leaders trying to exercise authority over kings, and kings exercising authority over the church. The main advantage the kings had, was military power; the church had no independent military power.
What? Which “armies of their own”? When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, which army did the Church use to fight back and re-instate them? That’s right, it didn’t, because it didn’t have one. When Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Church and unilaterally broke with Rome, what army did the Church use to fight back and take power again? That’s right, it didn’t, because it didn’t have one. When the Swiss cantons decided to take control away from the Church and replace theocratic rule with secular rule, what army did the Church use to fight back and take power again? That’s right, it didn’t, because it didn’t have one. There are plenty of examples right through the medieval era. This conflict of authority between church and state was one of the driving forces behind many of the wars of the era.
All this is drifting far from the historical facts I pointed out, which directly answered your questions.
Why did the Enlightenment not occur earlier? Because it was an outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. Most of its architects were Christians, and many of the Enlightenment’s core values (including liberty of conscience, separation of church and state, the priority of reason over blind faith, methodological naturalism as a means of scientific inquiry, humanism), are found in pre-Enlightenment and even pre-Reformation Christian writings.
So why didn’t the Reformation occur earlier? There were several previous attempts at reformation which didn’t succeed the way The Reformation did. The political and religious landscape had to change before The Reformation was possible. I provided the contrasting examples of the fifteenth century Bohemian Reformation, and the sixteenth century Swiss Reformation, as evidence.
There is clear evidence that it was “the” Christian view in the early centuries of Christianity. However, after Christianity was made the state religion by Theodotius, and political power started being transferred to the Church by the emperors, “the” dominant Christian view changed. There were still occasional Christian communities which held and followed the original view (such as the Socinians, Mennonites, Anabaptists, Quakers), but they were in the minority. At this point it was only “a” Christian view, and didn’t become “the” Christian view again until after the Enlightenment.
Speaking for the view I’m discussing, I can say it was the product of Christianity because it didn’t exist in the period prior, and was demonstrably proposed first by Christians, on theological grounds.
Feel free to contest any of the statements I’ve made, with evidence.
…and the persecution of the Anabaptists, Socinians, Mennonites, and the 30 Years War, and the murder of Servetus, and any number of other evils. Yes they happened. This doesn’t affect the point I made. The Reformation did have a number of positive effects as well.
This is misleading. Homosexuality was never punishable by death in England. However, sodomy was punishable by death in England, long before the Reformation, under ecclesiastical law. The Buggery Act of 1533 was simply a secular law which had the same effect.
Democracy, or governmental systems akin to it, also existed prior to the emergence of Christianity. You have the greeks, the Senate in Rome, and so forth. It isn’t an accident that many of the first buildings built by the young US nation looked like Greek and Roman buildings.
We all seem to agree that Christianity didn’t exist in a bubble, and for my purposes in this discussion that is good enough for me. The rest are our personal opinions, and I think I have voiced mine to the degree I feel comfortable with. Thanks for your replies!
The view I’m discussing is the view that church and state should be separated. Obviously neither the Greeks or Romans ever countenanced that view.
But if you’re speaking more broadly about “How do Greek democracies and the Roman Senate fit into the view that the architects of the Enlightenment were inspired by Christianity”, then the answer is they fit just fine. The very fact that the Enlightenment saw a resurrection of democratic systems, was due to the religious and/or ethical convictions of various Enlightenment leaders. They saw it as the system best able to secure the liberty of the conscience. But no one is suggesting the Enlightenment invented democracy.
). In fact, even teasing apart what is “Christian influence” or what is from “outside” may be quite a formidable trick, aside from some obvious things such as noted by 