I had a very long post with some final thoughts on Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages but when I came back to publish it my browser had timed out on the save and all of it was gone. I tried to refresh with no luck. I do not have time to retype the whole thing but I wanted to post a short excerpt from the book that I included in my original thoughts:
…When the Reformers, secular politicians, and natural scientists dismantled scholasticism, religion gave up its claim to control the terms of public and commercial discourse. Indeed, it had little choice but to do so, since military power was gravitating into the hands of secular princes and economic power was gravitating into those of the business class. But, in a way not generally recognized, modern science was also forced to redefine itself. Scientific rationalism emerged from the wreckage of scholasticism strengthened in technique but greatly impoverished in scope—unable to command the fields of metaphysics, ethics, and politics as Aristotle had done; unable to answer the “why†questions about the universe that his doctrine of “final causes†had supplied; and unable to encompass philosophical issues like the eternity and intelligibility of the universe. Certain of these fields—metaphysics and theology, in particular—were left to be dealt with privately by people in their individual capacities. But others, including ethics, politics, and social relations, fell into a no-man’s land claimed by both sides. The result has been continued conflict of a sort unforeseen by the celebrants of scientific “preeminence.â€
This brief quote captures a lot of the feel of Rubenstein’s book as he traces the history of thought and the changes in the relationship between faith and reason. The role the church played in all of this is fascinating. Rubenstein’s conclusions are illuminating, articulately defended and thought provoking. There is plenty in this book for ecclesial dreamers who look towards the future with hope–or, as Rubenstein says, “hunger for wholeness.” But those hopes and hungers can not find fulfillment until we have a better grasp of our history. Towards that end alone this book is well worth reading.
Speaking of hungering for wholeness, I am on to the next two books in the queue:
More to come…
