Conversion of Emperor Constantine  (artist: Rubens) (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

What followed, in the West, was the rise of the Christianity. Did Christianity get strong because it offered Romans a way out of the cynical ennui of life in the late Roman Empire, i.e. programmed them to be values-driven again? Or did it just happen to coincide with the era of that ennui? My position is that changes in values coincide with social changes because values changes lead to new patterns of behavior, ones that either help or hinder a society in its struggle to survive. Neither causes the other. They are both symptoms of deeper changes in a nation’s consciousness, but they are useful indicators, and it just may be that in this century (the twenty-first by Western reckoning) we will get a handle on those deeper cultural processes, learn how to plan and implement our future growth, and end the horrors of our species’ past. That is what the triumph of reason will mean, if we can bring it about.

Christianity told people that the highest state for a human to aspire to is not citizenship. It is a state of grace, that is, peace with God. This was easier to achieve in a monastery or nunnery. Renounce the world in all of its tempting forms; focus on eternity. The balance between Christian values and Roman ones was hard to strike. When the Visigoths’ challenge came, too many Romans had let their virtues and behaviors decay for too long. The Christian community, in the meantime, had been taught to shut it all out. 

People who had integrated the two value sets, who could be passionately loyal to Rome and also to the rigorous moral code of Christianity, were too few to stop the barbarian tide. Rome fell, in an agony that we today cannot imagine. But the challenge was bound to come. One hundred fifty years in evolutionary terms is six generations – almost nothing. It took another thousand years for Europe to find the balance between the ideals of democratic citizenship and those of Christian spirituality. I will have more to say below on that step in the cultural evolution of the West.  

Under the Christian world view, the earth was the centre of the universe, specially created by God to house man, his most beloved creation. But man’s role was not to enjoy life as much as he could (as the ancients had) in this garden turned, by human’s sin, to a barren plain. Humans were here to praise God and gratefully accept all that God sent their way, all joy and all suffering. Getting ready for the next life after death was what mattered. This sounds like a backward step, and in many ways it was.

                                                             

                           

                             The Good Samaritan (artist: Morot) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

But Christianity added some useful ideas of its own. Christians were taught to act humanely toward all other people, not just other Romans; to behave honestly and compassionately in their dealings with others; and to commit in a personal way to Christ’s kind of faith and his simple, honest, compassionate way of life. Christians were programmed to live as if being kind to all was a desirable, moral way to be, even if kind actions might not get any material rewards for their doer in this lifetime.

This was a big change from the ways of the slave-owning, gladiator-loving, sensual, jingoistic late-Empire Romans. Why the Church later became so cynical as to conduct wars and own property while individual serfs were not to even contemplate such things (unless the pope told them to make war on the heathens) became vague. But the grip and the social utility of Christianity’s ideas was so strong that hypocritical authorities found ways to steer ordinary followers’ thoughts past these inconsistencies for centuries.