Religion and the Rise of Western Culture - Chapter 1 notes

We are all related or involved with the history of Christian culture. It is more intimate than many others. All the historical religions gradually change over the changing ages and irradical historical backgrounds. There is no religion that you can trace back to its ultimate roots, except Christianity. It is even difficult to study the Western religion and the Western culture, because there is so much information now, that we tend to separate and divide into different categories instead of uniting and bonding everything. Political theory, constitutional hisotyr, economic history, ecclesiastical history, history of dogma, and liturgiology. What is going on here is the separation of all the spheres. We have people specialize in certain areas and by doing this, we break it all up. If we give it any leeway over us, the State will take over and destroy us. Man has strayed from the spiritual and gone towards the physical. "Religion is the key of history." When looking at the religion/governing relationship, we see direct correlations between its religious faith and its social achievement. Europe has had great influence on the world. This is due, not to the idea of our perfection, but because of thinking through how to incorporate into humanity and to change the world. Everything, even pagan beliefs, originated off of Christian ideas. Before people caught onto the idea that the religion shaped the culture, the West had been quietly influencing everywhere. The Western culture is distinct because of its missionary characteristic. European history is a series of renaissances - or of revivals. The monastic reforming had a hand in this. What connected a culture together was a common interest and a shared fellowship of ideas. Any cultural achievement done can be "blamed" on its religion.

"In that age, religion was the only power that remained unaffected by the collapse of civilization, by the loss of faith in social institutions and cultural traditions and by the loss of hope in life. Whenever genuine religion exists it must always possess this quality, since it is of the essence of religion to bring man into religion with transcendent and eternal realities."