By Lee Dise

First of a seven-part series.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lee Dise is an accomplished trombonist and computer programmer, who also happens to know a great deal about things like philosophy, theology, history and related disciplines. He’s also a born-again Christian and in this multi-installment series appearing each day, starting this week on HillFaith, Lee will offer an insightful and provocative analysis of how we got from where we were to where we are today. 

“Indeed, it is the protean ability of Western civilization to be self-critical and self-correcting – not only in producing wealth but over the whole range of human activities – that constitutes its most decisive superiority over any of its rivals.”— Paul Johnson

For most of its existence, America has survived and thrived on the clashing of opinions and much bickering.  This has always been the Western way.

Western civilization started in ancient Greece.  Not the bickering, which surely has been with us always, but its elevation to a virtue.  The Greeks believed that arguing was the only way to arrive at the truth, and they were very interested in truth.   They also valued the individual and many Greek city-states practiced some form of democracy, believing that men should have some say-so over who governs them.

These attitudes didn’t go over well with Greece’s neighbors.  Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

“…[the] Persian wars (490-480 BC) offered the East the last real chance of checking Western culture in its embryonic state, before the Greeks’ radically dynamic menu of constitutional government, private property, broad-based militias, civilian control of military forces, free scientific inquiry, rationalism, and separation between religious and political authority would spread to Italy, and thus via the Roman Empire to most of northern Europe and the Western Mediterranean.  Indeed, the words freedom and citizen did not exist in the vocabulary of any other Mediterranean culture, which were either tribal monarchies, or theocracies.”

Armed with a sense of high morale and opportunism, the Greeks spread far and wide their dangerous ideas — dangerous, that is, to despots.

Hanson continued:

“Other far older and more centralized powers — whether theocracies in North Africa or political autocracies in Asia — took notice.  In broad strategic terms, by the early fifth century [BC] Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians had seen enough of these intrusive and ubiquitous Greeks as shippers, traders, mercenaries, and colonists.

“Could not this quarreling and fractious people be overwhelmed by the sheer manpower and wealth of imperial armies before its insidious culture spread beyond the Hellenic mainland and made the eastern Mediterranean a lake of their own?”

Well, it’s not like the Persians didn’t try.  In 490 BC, they attacked Greece at Marathon but were humiliated by a much smaller Greek army.  In 480 BC, a tiny unit of Spartans and assorted allies bottled up the entire Persian army at Thermopylae for days, buying valuable time for the Greek city-states to prepare for the coming invasion.  At Salamis, rookie seamen from Athens sank Persia’s highly vaunted and experienced navy.  The Persian Emperor slunk back home, abandoning his army to be annihilated by the Greeks at Plataea.

But as culturally and economically powerful as the Greeks were, their Achilles’ heel was politics.  King Philip of Macedon took advantage of their disunity and conquered Greece in its entirety by 336 BC.  However, Philip admired the Greeks and saw himself not as their conqueror, but as their savior.  By the time Rome put an end to the Macedonian reign (by 148 BC), Macedon, too, had become enthralled by Greek culture.  And, eventually, so was Rome itself.

As for Western culture, what Rome brought to the table was a sort of genius for practicality and common sense.  They were great builders, architects, and engineers.  They were excellent administrators and instituted law, treaties, and trade agreements.

This provided them a good measure of the political stability that Greece had lacked.  To be sure, Rome did have problems with regard to the imperial succession.  Nevertheless, their civilization survived for almost 1,000 years — almost 2,000 if you count the Byzantine Empire’s long run.  That’s impressive.

Possessing Greek ideas and Roman practicality, Western civilization was almost complete.  It needed one more thing: Christian belief.  Historically, Greeks and Romans had been polytheists, but their gods were no smarter or morally better than they were — just more powerful.  This gave them certain moral blind spots.

The Greeks believed in personal virtue, yet practiced infanticide.  As for the Romans, they were just basically cruel.  But in this upstart “heresy” of Judaism, infanticide had long been prohibited by Mosaic law, and the Lord Jesus Christ taught that we should love one another — even our enemies.

Persecuting, torturing, and killing Christians on an industrial scale failed to stop the spread of Christian belief.  In 313 AD, Emperor Constantine made it legal to be a Christian, and in 380 AD Emperor Theodosius made Christianity Rome’s official religion.

As for Rome, it eventually fell, but the Church lived on and in doing so saved Western civilization.  Christian monks preserved the Greek and Roman writings, as well as the ancient Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament.

Western civilization is not bound to and does not rely on nationalities or regions; essentially, it is a collection of ideas.  Its lines on the map have been continually drawn and redrawn, yet its ideas and ideals are what gives it life.  However, it does face serious challenges in the months and years ahead.

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Next: From the Fragments of Empire, A New Beginning

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