//david f, everything you said was invented by PROTEST-ant Christians//

No, not everything:

* The divine right of kings was invented by Catholics, who came before Protestants, but the Protestants took it to heart.
* Giordano Bruno was burnt by the Catholics. I am less familiar with the case of Servetus, so I don't know which sort of Christians engaged in that very Christian act of burning him alive. However, it should be noted that his execution was less about opposition to science than it was about opposition to his heretical relgious beliefs: Bruno was a follower of Hermetism, a heretical cult based on Acient Egyptian religious concepts.
* St. Paul was not a Protestant.

//Aspley, history has already been rewritten by communists//

History is written by the victors. I can't remember the last time communists actually won anything.

//VK3AUU, sorry but you are wrong.//

Maybe about the first bit, but Paul makes Otto Weininger look like a feminist. It's all through his epistles. Check out this website:

https://www.biblegateway.com/

Yes, history is being rewritten without the anti church, anti clerical, anti-Christian prejudice. At last we are beginning to see the truth of the matter.

Dear Peter,

I am happy to take your word that Western society is a product of Christianity.

However, Western society is not a success story.

While liberalism is great (had it been thoroughly implemented), Western society includes many other features, many of them negative and overall, in general, this society is neither a happy one nor spiritually conducive.

How then is it possible that Christianity is responsible only for the good features, such as liberalism, but not for the ailments of Western society?

Exactly Yu

Western society is defined by overconsumption, inequality, alienation, crime, drugs, mental illness, pollution, environmental degradation, exploitation, loneliness, idiocy, sexual deviance, drunken violence, domestic violence, racism, homophobia, godlessness, dishonesty, scum for leaders, addiction, waste, dysfunction, pointlessness and mass stupidity.

Good job xianity.

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Dear Peter,

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In the opening words of your article, this month, you indicate :

« Inventing the Individual: the Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop belongs to the genre of the history of ideas … Siedentop … gives us an accessible journey through the transformations of the self from the preclassical Western family, through ancient Greece and Rome and the rise of the church in Europe to the sixteenth century. »

The noun « individual » means :

• a person considered separately rather than as part of a group [OED definition]

• a single organism capable of independent existence [biological definition]

• a being, distinct from all others, which cannot be divided without being destroyed [philosophical definition]

The “idea” that Christianity or any other religion may define an “individual” is clearly an oxymoron. Christianity or “the church”, as you like to call it, defines a group - or a “particular dogma” or “set of beliefs” if you wish - not an individual.

Free will is the distinguishing feature of an individual. Free will is autonomy – the faculty of an individual to choose his own course of action. The degree of autonomy differs from one individual to another, describing a Gaussian curve throughout each individual’s life, from birth to death. It is a variable, not a constant.

While the church fully recognizes the possibility of free will and individual responsibility, at the same time, it actively promotes the image of a Christ shepherding his faithful flock of docile sheep all along that Gaussian lifeline, leaving no room whatsoever for the expression of any form of individuality.

The seeds of liberalism are to be found in the sense of justice, whether innate or acquired, in every human being, from an early age. There is no limit as to just how far back this can be traced in the history of the development of mankind.

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(Continued …)

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(Continued …)

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To quote one of Siedentop’s critics:

« Siedentop's view that the ancient world lacked a sense of equal status amongst society's members is wrong. From the third century BC Epicureans lived in communities which promoted learning, mutual assistance, kindness and friendship. And yet six decades after Epicurus established his movement it was Christianity - more than any other force - which sought, first, to misrepresent it and, finally, to destroy it. It is the greatest irony, therefore, that the origins of Western Liberalism are being attributed to the medieval theologians - neo Platonists in any case - rather than the genuine pioneers of secular individualism. »

Also, as Professor David Abulafia of Cambridge University points out :

« The rise of medieval cities and of urban self-government is another area where Siedentop misses the point. He romantically assumes that all citizens were equals. But that is not how things worked in Florence, Venice and elsewhere, where aristocracy mattered and family power (exercised by patriarchs very similar to the paterfamilias of Roman times) lay at the heart of politics. »

In my view, Siedentop’s book belongs less to the genre of the history of ideas (as you suggest) than it does to the purely literary narrative.

Who could doubt that the seeds of liberalism came to fruition in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment ?

“Liberalism” being defined as :

« A political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavour, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties. » [ Dictionary.com]

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