Читать книгу Western Civilization - Paul R. Waibel - Страница 15

The roots of Western Civilization, that is, those core values or principles that distinguishes it from other civilizations, are found in its Judeo‐Christian and Greek heritage. These include the emphasis on reason, the unique value of the individual, and the conviction that there is meaning and purpose for both history and the individual.

In contrast to the other religions of the ancient Near East that believed in many gods who were in some fashion or other born or created, Yahweh is sovereign and transcendent, eternal and omnipotent, the creator of all that exists. Nature is not an extension of the divine, nor is it the dwelling place of gods, spirits, and demons, but the handiwork of God, created from nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Nature is meant to show forth God's glory and inspire worship. God the Creator alone is to be worshiped, not nature. This demythicizing of nature made possible both the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in the West.

Central to Judeo‐Christianity is the belief that God created human beings in his own image, distinct from the rest of creation. Since God created an orderly universe, not a universe of random chance, and created human beings in his image, they are able to use reason to understand how the universe works, or as the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said, “capable of thinking God's thoughts after him.” But the Hebrews did not create scientific thought, that is, the scientific method. That awaited the Greek philosophers who sought to understand reality beginning with reason alone. The Hebrews were concerned with knowing God and his will for them, not philosophical speculation.

The Hebrews believed that although God was sovereign over all of his creation, he endowed human beings with a free will. Each individual was not only empowered with the ability to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, but obligated to do so: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life …” (Deuteronomy 30:19, ESV). God alone was the source of what was right or wrong, good or evil. Choosing to obey God's will resulted in blessings; choosing to disobey resulted in death:

If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you … But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.

(Deuteronomy 30: 16‐18, ESV)

The Hebrews had an explanation for the existence of evil. It was not the result of the capricious or whimsical will of finite gods who were themselves subject to fate. Rather, evil resulted from the willful choice of the individual to reject God's moral law and act as if autonomous.

Just as the nation of Israel was God's chosen people bound to him by a covenant, so too was the individual. According to the covenant between God and Abraham, the Hebrew people were to make God's moral law known to all the nations of the world by their obedience. There is both parochialism and universalism implied in the covenant. On the one hand, it is a covenant between God and his Chosen People. On the other hand, it is a covenant between God and all humanity. The prophet Isaiah gives a vision of a time when all the nations (i.e. all people groups) of the earth will come to the mountain of the Lord (Isaiah 2:2).

The Hebrew prophets reminded the people that because they were chosen to know God's Law, they had a responsibility to be on the side of justice. They reminded the people that tolerating injustice violated God's Law and would bring upon them God's righteous wrath. Injustice violated the dignity of the individual (both male and female) who bore the image of God, and injustice was therefore an affront to God himself. By reminding the people that their freedom of will impacted the present and the future, the prophets held out the vision of a messianic age free of poverty and injustice. The belief that human beings were able to construct a better world order became one of the core values of Western Civilization.

The worldview of the ancient Hebrews differed dramatically from that of all the other civilizations of the ancient world. It is a “mechanistic” view of a universe that operates by discoverable natural laws, not random chance. Time is understood to be linear with both a beginning and an end not an endless repetition of cycles. There is meaning and purpose for both history and the individual. All this is known by human beings through reason. Because there are moral absolutes implicit in the universe, and because human beings possess a free will, individual choices and actions influence the flow of history. When blended with the worldview of the ancient Greeks (see Chapter 2) and later certain Germanic traditions (see Chapter 4) the result is what is called Western Civilization.