Religious Orthodoxy

We begin our study of Asian Religions by asking what religion is, what kinds of processes occur within it, and what kinds of structures it has. Is it a private matter, or is it a shared system of meanings that people transmit from generation to generation? When these questions are asked in a cross-cultural and cross-traditional context, we begin to realize that different religious traditions symbolize reality in different ways. Human beings have a need for sacred sanctions and value, and they seek to fulfill these needs through symbolic processes of transformation that are specific to each religious tradition. (John Y. Fenton, Norvin Hein, etc. 1983. Religions of Asia. Page 2)

 

Some years ago at a discussion conducted by a religious leader (guru) from India, an American professor of religion was asked the following question: “How do you define religion?” Before the American could frame his reply, the Indian religious leader declared that religion throughout the world and for all people was simply and clearly “devotion to God”. The American pointed out certain complexities inherent in any definition of religion, but the guru immediately went to affirm that the God he and his followers worshiped was really the same one worshiped by religious people everywhere. For him there was no conflict or competition between Hindu spiritual message and the beliefs of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other members of other faiths. (John Y. Fenton, Norvin Hein, etc. 1983. Religions of Asia. Page 3)

 

The Problem of Cross-Cultural Definition

 

If any of us were asked to define religion, how would we reply? We might suggest that the type of religion with which we as individuals are most familiar is similar to that found in all human cultures. And if we are able to describe religion in general terms, this is because all religions share some intent or content. As we study human history, we discover that religion, or something very like it, appears to have been a part of every human society. But the religions of humankind have always been so diverse that we need to be cautious about making generalizations regarding what all traditions have in common.

 

It is true that the guru’s “devotion to God” does describe certain forms of religion and would apply to most Christians, Jews, Muslims, and many Hindus. But if we examine more closely the meaning of the terms devotion and God, we discover significant differences in their meaning within these traditions. Thus when “devotion to God” is used to describe what is common among people of different faiths; it must be understood in a far more general sense than its specific significance for each of the different traditions.

 

Clearly, “devotion to God” is not a broad enough definition to include all forms of religion. For example, some Hindus regard devotion to a personal deity as an inferior type of religion. Some Buddhist consider any kind of dependence on a divine being a means to avoid the real problems of life. Thus, a satisfactory characterization of religion must include all of the realities to which the different religious traditions intend to relate, as well as the full range of actual religious relationships to these realties. (John Y. Fenton, Norvin Hein, etc. 1983. Religions of Asia. Pages 3-4)

 

 

Religion is human involvement with sacred sanction, vitality, significance, and value. This involvement is mediated through symbolic processes of transformation. Religion is expressed in and transmitted by cultural traditions that constitute systems of symbols. (John Y. Fenton, Norvin Hein, etc. 1983. Religions of Asia. Page 7)

Current Religious Orthodoxy: "The Group" as Supreme Being

Wim Rietdijk, D.Sci.

I gave argument after argument; their only answer was that I too often repeated myself... I blamed them for it; they reacted by saying that I fell short in neighborly love... Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur. (The world wants to be deceived; therefore, let it be deceived.) [Really?] Sebastian Franck In all eras and cultures, the essential social evils originated in moral failure or stupidity of the elites. But it has always been forbidden to say so, or worse, to demonstrate it.

 

Jean Grenier, Essai sur l'esprit d' orthodoxie.  Gallimard.

(1938 - #435)

       The book of Grenier mirrors the inner drama of French intellectuelles. The title itself can lead to a misunderstanding. The book is written not about religious orthodoxness,  but rather about Marxist orthodoxness, which far more onerously weighs upon the consciousness and conscience of the creators of spiritual culture. The French intellectuelles still do not know that terrible tyranny, which accompanies the triumph of orthodoxness in life, they know only the ideological preliminaries. Moreover, it mustneeds be said, that every triumphing orthodoxness is tyrannical. The Marxist orthodoxy, after Marx already taking form by means of the myth-creating process, bears a formal affinity with the old religious orthodoxies, but it is more impudently brazen in the realisation of its pretensions. The drama of the intellectuelles, sympathetic to the social aspirations of Marxism and Communism, yet not consenting to accept the tyranny of orthodoxness, was acutely experienced by A. Zhid and he with honour left off from the contradiction, set before him. A man, who strives for truth and values truth, cannot accept any sort of a binding social orthodoxness, even though he be sympathetic to the social aims, with which this orthodoxness is connected. A man, not bereft of his conscience, cannot accept lies, obligatory, as a social duty. Grenier is such a man of conscience, he values truth, for him the knowledge of truth has value, irrespective of the social struggle and practical aims. He is an idealist. It was with agitation that I read his book, since it reminded me of my youth. I was moreso a Marxist, than Grenier, but I could not accept the Marxist orthodoxy out of a love for truth, independent of the class struggle. In philosophy I was not a materialist, I was pervaded by the ideals of German Idealism, chiefly by Kant and partly by Fichte, I believed in the unconditional character of truth and good, rooted in the transcendental consciousness. This led me to a break with Marxism, which I fully sympathised with socially. Already then, though there still did not yet exist the Communists, they demanded an orthodoxy, the acceptance of Marxism, as a totalitarian system. The Marxist orthodoxy could tend to produce the impression of an intellectual doctrine, but it was foremost a weapon of the revolutionary struggle. Orthodoxy always was a weapon for struggle, and suchlike also was the Christian orthodoxness. The orthodoxness bears a sociological character. Religious orthodoxness is bound up with the social-organising side of religion. The purely religious experience of the encounter of man with God does not beget dogmatism. Dogmatism is the by-product of the socialisation of religion. The orthodoxy of Marxism is bound up not with the scientific nor even with its political side, but rather with its religious, its religiously inverted side. In Soviet Russia all the philosophic disputes transpire not under the standard of the discerning of truth and error, but under the standard of a discerning of orthodoxy and heresy. The categories of orthodoxness and heresy however are neither scientific nor philosophic, but the rather religious, more specifically so theological. The Marxist orthodoxy, one of the most intolerant orthodoxies in the history of human thought, is a theological scholasticism. In the book of Grenier one can find many accurate critical observations concerning Marxism and its orthodox pretensions. Yet his opposition to Marxist orthodoxy is not a matter of agitation, only but purely intellectual. He defends first of all the independence and freedom of culture and cultural values. And in his defending of humanistic culture he is a typical Frenchman. His book ends with an open letter to Malraux, who moreover is not so much a Marxist, as rather a Nietzschean.

       All the thoughts of Grenier, evoking disquiet as regards modern orthodoxies and totalitarianisms, lead to an acknowledging of the primacy of spirit. Consciousness for him is determinative of being. But he does not get down at depth at the philosophic side of the problem. He displays chagrin at the conformism of the intellectuelles, who get caught up in the temptation of totalitarianism. I think, that this is determined not by that the intellectuelles tend to sense the social truth of the totalitarian movements, but rather their asocial character, their dread of struggle. The intellectuelles ought to realise, that they are representatives of spirit, and not of society, not of the state, not of the people, not of a class. They ought to speak words of truth and right, not dependent upon utility, nor altogether socially indifferent. On the contrary, they ought to stand up for the socially just-truth, and not consent to lies, though these be in the name of the realisation of this just-truth. Marx and Nietzsche, two of the most influential thinkers in the modern world, variously and in the name of differing aims have altered the understanding of truth. Truth became a by-product of the social struggle or of the will to power. And herein arose a crisis in the relationship of man to truth. Communism and Fascism alike deny the existence of truth in the old sense of the word and they do this in the name of their totalitarian principle. And one mustneeds understand, that this signifies a pretentiousness to the totalitarian outlook, since in it there is a distorted truth. Christianity is likewise totalitarian, it is a total truth embracing all the whole of life, but this sort of totalitarianism has nothing in common with Marxist orthodoxy nor with totalitarian states. Spiritual truth is totalitarian and it relates to the human person, not to society, the state, the nation, the collective, the class, all matters in which everything is partial. Society does not comprise it nor can it make pretense to integral wholeness and fullness, only the person can make such a claim, and it is as a task, not as a given. From whence also is evident the fatal error of an orthodoxy. An orthodoxy acknowledges society (be it religious, or national or social a collective) as the bearer of the integral wholeness of truth, which is bindingly obligatory for the person. But in society everything is partial, not integrally whole, not totalitarian, whereas the integrally whole totalitarian truth is a task, facing the person, which it has to resolve in common with other persons, in a communitarian spirit. Christian totalitarianism, so very distinct from formal liberalism and individualism, presupposes freedom, as the setting of the verymost totalitarian truth. Totalitarianism be it Marxist or Fascist denies freedom, i.e. it admits only of such a freedom as appears the offspring of necessity of the social or national organisation. The perspective, which has to be set in opposition to the orthodoxness and totalitarianism, is not individualism, as such egocentric and indifferent to truth, but rather personalism, comprising in itself an universal content, i.e. a communitarian personalism. The pathos of orthodoxness is nowise the pathos of truth, for it signifies moreso an indifference towards truth and the manipulation of intellectual doctrine for purposes of struggle and the ends of the organisation. An orthodoxy, as the fullness and integral wholeness of truth, is not a given and cannot be as such bindingly obligatory with any sort of societies, even though religious, for it reveals itself upon the "pathway" and in "life". The book of Grenier leads towards these thoughts and in this is its merit. (JEAN GRENIER, ESSAI SUR L'ESPRIT D'ORTHODOXIE. GALLIMARD. Under "New Books" section in Journal Put'. Aug./Oct. 1938, No. 57,  p. 84-86.)

 

Between Anarchy and Fanaticism: Religious Freedom’s Challenge

by Eugene B. Borowitz

Dr. Borowitz is professor of education and Jewish religious thought at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, and editor of Sh’ma, a journal of Jewish responsibility. This article appeared in the Christian Century, July 15-22, 1987, p. 619.

Today’s American religious community is beset with tension. On the left, religious liberals fear that the various spiritual orthodoxies Will lead to extremism. Every act of spiritual zealotry -- such as the bombing of abortion clinics -- awakens in them the specter of religious fanatics controlling America. They believe that the slightest hint of an infringement upon the separation of church and state must be resisted to save our country from an impending obscurantist theocracy.

That paranoid fantasy has an equally corrosive counterpart on the right. If Americans are not educated, industrious and sober; if our streets are violent and our sexuality pagan; if our family life is unstable and our personalities unsound -- in short, if America has lost its moral stature and thus its national self-respect, then, for religious conservatives, it is the fault of those who prate of freedom and sow anarchy -- not the least cause being liberal religionist loss of proper faith.

These ghostly figures -- religious fanatics on the one hand, and spiritual ethical nihilists, on the other -- haunt our discussions of religious freedom. I have no illusion that by raising them from the pit of our unconscious I shall thereby exorcise them. I only hope that by encouraging us to face our wild imaginings I may make it somewhat easier for us to distinguish the ghosts from reality.

My approach to this conflict begins with an assertion of religious self-respect, namely, that religion ought not look to secular disciplines to assign it its role in helping determine our social policy, and it ought vigorously to resist the frequent efforts to tell it to stand at the distant sidelines. Like many religionists of both the left and the right, I believe that religion must play a far more significant role in the life of our culture than it has recently if our democracy is to regain its strong moral tone.

But beyond this initial statement of unity, the two religious perspectives radically and disturbingly divide. To begin with the camp in which I may be found, religious liberals appreciate pluralism and tolerate divergent lifestyles because they know that theirs is a limited truth. Indeed, they see all religion deriving as much from human spiritual striving and creativity as from God’s instructive presence. They know enough of God’s truth to devote their lives to it, perhaps even to seek to share its benefits with others who could benefit from its truth. But since they regard that truth as refracted through human finitude, they cannot insist that their version of it must now become the one way for everyone -- and been forced by the government. Self and soul and conscience may lead others to different forms of God’s service. This openness to the diversity of religious insight this willingness to appreciate and even learn from others, is the glory of religious liberalism, keeping it forever fresh.

Traditional religion speaks in more certain terms. Its holy books are God’s own words, not merely inspired literature. In them God has given humankind specific, clear instructions for individual and social conduct. True, every religion has experienced discord, and its forms have changed over time. But pluralism and diversity must stay within the discipline of God’s word or be deemed heretical. True, There are limits on the demands that can be made of sinners, and every person’s conscience deserves some respect. But to cultivate a social neutrality toward God’s fundamental teachings adds to the sinfulness of our time. This certainty in knowing God’s one, true way generates the courage to stand against the majority and endure any suffering. It is the glory of traditional religion.

There is no theological way of reconciling these different understandings of the human and divine aspects of religion. No tactical procedures, like getting to know one another or conducting dialogue in good will -- for all the intrinsic worth and moral significance of that effort -- will overcome so fundamental a disagreement. Realistically, then, we must expect to continue living with considerable religious tension.

I do not consider this lack of religious serenity a major threat to our democratic future. It should, rather, give us greater insight into the moral daring our founders displayed by separating religion and government. They did not erect their symbolic "wall" between the two because they disparaged religion. They considered it self evident that a reality transcending nature validated democracy by mandating concern for the common welfare and respect for every individual. Because belief empowered and shaped political life, they granted all religions the right of free exercise, and knowing the human desire to dominate, they courageously insisted that government not infringe upon religious life. They even made it possible for some uncommon believers to be exceptions to the nation’s laws -- a breathtaking acknowledgment of the significance of religious belief. The price of such benign disinterest by the state was that the religious faiths must refrain from intruding creedal matters into political affairs.

Jefferson and his co-workers displayed creative genius by not seeking to resolve this problem. They gave us no rule by which to mediate the conflicts arising from the state’s positive need for religion and its legal distance from it. They surely had no model for the place of religion in their ideal republic, for they were convinced that the previous arrangements had been disastrous for the commonweal. They simply left it to the democratic process to resolve future conflicts between religion and government. I assume that they could accept so indeterminate a structure because they had confidence in democracy.

What the Constitution or the Bill of Rights could not specify, or could indicate only ambiguously, the ongoing give-and-take of an engaged citizenry would slowly clarify. Politically they were pragmatists, though morally they remained idealists. It is an unphilosophic combination of standards, but one which, I am convinced, can scarcely be improved on for those who would govern both democratically and humanely.

Our generation is less sanguine about the practice of democracy than were the Jeffersonians, and the high emotions of our politics of confrontation testify to our security. How, then, shall we idealists who are also determined to be realists find the courage to walk the open, uncertain way they marked out for us? Seeking to serve God, where can we find the compelling reason to treat with civility the arguments and the people we know to be profoundly wrong?

To begin with, though we have had to give up Jefferson’s moral confidence in a rationally enlightened humankind, we have good reason to share his other motive for separating government from religion, mainly, humankind’s tragic experience with melding the state’s unlimited power and religion’s absolute truth. Though we no longer see classic wars of religion, most Americans are repelled by the way religion exacerbates the conflicts between Irish Protestants and Catholics, Lebanese Christians and Muslims, Israeli right-wing Orthodox and Palestinian Christians and Muslims, and Indian Hindus and Sikhs and Pakistani Muslims. (The pseudo-religions of our time, communism and Nazism, have acted with equal if not greater inhumanity; but they, at least, made no claim of fealty to a God whose supreme concern is peace.) When religious leaders like the Ayatollah Khomeini or Meir Kahane propose to run a country strictly by what they understand to be God’s revealed word, and hence to do so undemocratically, most American believers become deeply troubled.

Moreover, we can draw on an experience unavailable to the authors of our religious liberty, namely 200 years of American history. The bold experiment in separation has, on the whole, succeeded remarkably well. It has kept America free of religious wars, persecution and established intolerance. It has enabled us, with spasms of regression, to overcome prejudices entrenched for centuries and to be increasingly humane to those whose faiths seem to us odd or even offensive. It has fostered an ethos according to which most Americans see religion as a beneficent contributor to our nation’s social welfare. And it has largely benefited the life of the faiths themselves.

Forced to rely on persuasion and example rather than on government support, American religions exhibit a vitality and personal significance unmatched in most other societies. American religion, in my estimation, has weathered Western civilization’s turn to secularity comparatively well, and that, I think, is largely because it has needed to stand on its own.

I have had my own experience with the swing of the religious-secular pendulum. Growing up in the 1930s in Columbus, Ohio -- no home then of aggressive religious orthodoxy -- I regularly felt the coercion of the dominant Protestant mentality. I realized one day that the song we were expected to sing as we marched into assembly at Heyl Avenue Elementary School was "Onward, Christian Soldiers." In high school, the principal did not hesitate, when chiding me for my immaturity, to call me to fulfill the injunction of Scripture -- that is, of Paul -- to give up childish things and act like an adult. Were America a Christian country, as the administrators I encountered took for granted, then we non-Christian patriots might well have had to find a way to participate in a religion we did not share. But we were also being taught that all citizens, regardless of religion, had equal rights in this country. To all of us who did not share the dominant -- though unevangelical -- Protestantism, the secular side of public education and of all civic life was liberating.

After World War II, secularity seized the cultural sway from Protestantism, and to some extent carried its revolution so far that it destroyed its own moral foundations. We are now seeking through our democratic disputes to determine just where the line between civic secularity and religious practice should be drawn. In trying to do so, the evils of the present ought not erase from memory -- it certainly cannot erase from mine -- the evils of the prior stage. American secularity came to power because of religion’s failure to respect the simple human tights Americans have long felt everyone has. If secularity itself now requires reining in, this movement ought not to undermine human freedom. Indeed, with American religion and secularity becoming increasingly diverse, no single religious position can hope to speak for us all. Any practice so bland as to be unobjectionable will surely be too empty to rectify our lack of spirituality.

Religious liberals, who claim to find God in human experience, should view as significant the two centuries of this American experiment with religious openness. They should see democracy as revelatory of how religious institutions can be combined with quite different institutions to build a moral social life. For the classic faiths, however, history dare not usurp the authority of God’s given word. Yet human experience does have an important, though subsidiary, role in religious orthodoxies. On the simplest level, they have achieved much of their recent success by learning the current fashions for successful communication. Their content, too, has not been unaffected by sociocultural developments, as their present celebration of the joy of marital sexuality indicates. More important, they know that Americans will judge the value of their faith largely by its fruits in human relations. (When, to give a recent example, his superiors removed the Roman Catholic archbishop of Seattle from areas of leadership where his soul had led him to gentle yet prophetic dissent from them, many pious Americans were appalled.)

Thomas Jefferson may well have been America’s greatest political thinker and draftsman, but Abraham Lincoln, I suggest, remains our model believer. By the conservative standards of his day, he seemed almost an infidel, refusing to attend a church or even to avow Christian faith. But no one then doubted -- and no one now, in a far less religious age, doubts -- the utter depth of his devotion to humankind and the awesome responsibilities that can lay upon us. Something like Lincoln’s faith runs strongly through the American psyche. Its persistence goes far to explain why, though institutional affiliation remains low, public-opinion surveys consistently show Americans as overwhelmingly affirming religious belief. Most traditional religious groups in the country can, I think, find ways of learning from this elemental American commitment to humaneness.

Liberals have already valuably explored the spiritual virtues of human freedom and creativity. They now need to make plain why their demythologization of sin and commandment does not eventually lead to a destructive anarchy. In a time when freedom is regularly abused, what limits do they place on the exercise of the individual will? What do they consider an irresponsible, irreligious exercise of personal autonomy, and how do they propose to teach and exemplify their doctrine of religious constraint?

Conservatives have tellingly demonstrated the spiritual fruits of faithfulness to God’s expressed will. They now need to explain, why a doctrine of inerrancy is not likely to lead to the sinfulness and profanation of fanaticism. What value does their understanding of God’s revelation place upon democracy? What sort of freedom is appropriate in their midst and how able are they to grant full dignity to people who hold different beliefs?

Few theological tasks could be as critical for our time as these: teaching us how, while loving freedom, to mandate high standards of behavior; and how, while maintaining God’s truth, to accommodate variety and dissent. Freedom of religion is not a condition achieved once and for all by a statute composed in Virginia, or by-statements recorded in the Constitution. It is today what it has always been: an incomparable American adventure, a courageous effort to solve in life what cannot be reconciled in theory.

 

The Clash of Orthodoxies
Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis
By Robert P. George

It is a common supposition among many of our cultural elites that a constitutional "wall of separation" between church and state precludes religious believers from bringing their beliefs to bear on public matters. This is because secular liberals typically assume that their own positions on morally charged issues of public policy are the fruit of pure reason, while those of their morally conservative opponents reflect an irrational religious faith. In The Clash of Orthodoxies Robert George shows that this supposition is wrong on both counts.

Challenging liberalism's claim to represent the triumph of reason, George argues that on controversial issues like abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage, traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs are actually rationally superior to secular liberal alternatives. Drawing on the natural law philosophical tradition, George demolishes various secularist pretenses, such as the notion that the very young and very old among us are somehow subpersonal and not worthy of full legal protection. He reveals the dubious person/body dualism implicit in secularist arguments, and he demonstrates the flawed reasoning behind the idea that the state ought to be neutral regarding competing understandings of the nature and value of marriage.

George also revisits the controversy surrounding his participation in the First Things "End of Democracy?" symposium, in which he considered the relevance of Catholic teachings regarding the legitimacy of political regimes to the contemporary American situation. George argues that because natural law and natural rights doctrine lie at the foundation of the American republic, the judicial reading of the Constitution that has undermined democracy in order to enshrine the secularist agenda is deeply flawed.

In advancing his thesis, George argues for a return to old-fashioned liberalism, a worldview that he claims is best exemplified by Pope John Paul II, whose teachings laud democracy, religious liberty, and economic freedom while also recognizing the demands of civil rights, social and economic justice, and the principle of subsidiarity. These demands restrain Catholics—and indeed all people of faith—from making personal freedom an absolute, and George takes to task those political leaders who, though believers, have denied or ignored the political responsibility this entails.

The Clash of Orthodoxies is a profoundly important contribution to our contemporary national conversation about the proper role of religion in politics. The lucid and persuasive prose of Robert George, one of America's most prominent public intellectuals, will shock secular liberals out of an unwarranted complacency and provide powerful ammunition for embattled defenders of traditional morality.

What They're Saying...

"The Clash of Orthodoxies is superbly argued, wholeheartedly, confidently, and even joyfully dedicated to exploring the intricacies of the issues in its purview and dealing fully with the opposing views. Robert P. George has done a great service in demonstrating that traditional morality still has an authoritative role to play in modern life, and in showing how a person of faith can enter the public square fearlessly, unashamedly, intelligently, and, above all, reasonably."
— National Review

"Although it is not easy to argue with a culture so deeply entrenched, yet one in which so much has gone wrong…George…is up to the job."
— National Catholic Register

"Robert P. George's The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law Religion, and Morality in Crisis is an excellent, scholarly presentation of the natural law way of getting at hot issues such as abortion."
— World

"[A]ll the essays are aimed at a nontechnical audience, and in them the reader gets to watch a fascinating mind at work: brilliant, of course, and learned, but, above all, tenacious. Robert George is the bulldog of American intellectuals—grasping hold of a topic and refusing to let it go until he's gotten to the bone."
— Weekly Standard

"...vastly enriches our understanding of the cultural and moral struggle that currently convulses our country."
— Times of Trenton

"The Clash of Orthodoxies is an indispensable book by an indispensable man, and it should be read every moral traditionalist who has an interest in engaging the moral arguments of anti-life theorists or participating in public discourse on the momentous topics of the culture of life."
— Touchstone

"A few of the essays show secularist professors hopping in the ring with George, only to find that the diminutive professor of political philosophy does a fair impression of Hulk Hogan—he doesn't just win; he throws the opponent out of the ring and begins to chase after him with a chair, so relentless is he in argument."
— Crisis

"Liberals should read The Clash of Orthodoxies by Princeton philosopher Robert P. George, who lucidly dissects the liberal consensus and outlines the philosophical basis of moral conservatism— if only to sharpen their wits in dealing with clever conservatives like George. Less clever conservatives should read it too because — to judge from television debates — not all of them know their own arguments."
— Chicago Sun-Times

 

AVERROES' REASON A MEDIEVAL TALE OF  CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM   By Jones Irwin

Since September 11, there has been a renewed interest in the nature of Islamic doctrine and thought. Many commentators have pointed to the fact that Fundamentalism is only one aspect of Muslim thought, albeit at this moment in time, a powerful and influential strand. 

However, despite such qualifications, little attention has been paid to the historical basis of this claim, i.e. the presence of a rationalist tradition in Islam. In this piece, I will look at what I will suggest is a paradigmatic example of such Islamic reason: the philosophy of Averroes. I will also highlight the significance of Averroes (and wider Islamic thought) for the development of rationalism within the Christian tradition, a factor which has been a major influence on the development of the West as such. By implication, this Islamic contribution to the formation of Western culture also calls into question any hard and fast distinction between the so-called 'progressive' West and 'backward' East.

Any analysis of Medieval Philosophy must take account of the extraordinary relationship which existed between philosophy and theology during this entire period. Although standard interpretations present Christianity as the dominant theological influence in this context, a fairer analysis must point to the constant inter-relationship and co-dependence which existed between the respective theological traditions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. 

Moreover, this strong influence did not lead to philosophy becoming the 'handmaiden' of theology, as many critics claim. On the contrary, in many instances the philosophical tendencies of medieval thinkers led them to interpret their own theological beliefs in specific ways. Thus in Early Christianity, for example, the influence of Plato's philosophical criticisms of art can be seen at work in Augustine's view of the imagination as profane. Additionally, one can wonder as to whether Augustine's view of original sin would have been so negative if he had not imbibed the Platonic conception of the Fall of the soul. 

The fusion of Hellenic and Biblical elements made Christian philosophy, particularly in its Augustinian guise, a subtle and influential metaphysic, both in the medieval period and well beyond (for example, both Calvin and Luther were to cite Augustine as a major precursor). However, it is an undeniable fact that the most profound development of Christian philosophy took place under an external influence, that of medieval Islamic thought.

Whereas Early Christianity was primarily Platonic in orientation (under the influence of both Plato's works and those of his neo-Platonic disciple, Plotinus), later medieval thinking began to look to Plato's successor, Aristotle, for philosophical guidance. Centres of Greek learning in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt were responsible for the survival of Aristotle's works in the West during this time. Most texts were translated from the original Greek into an intermediate Syriac version and then into Arabic. Later, when many of the original Greek texts were lost, it was these Arabic versions which provided the foundation for the re-translation back into late medieval Latin. 

When one considers the immense influence of Aristotelianism on later medieval Christianity and Judaism, and indeed succeeding Western history, it is instructive to remember this historical debt to the East. 

But the real intellectual contribution of medieval Islam to Western culture is less in terms of translation and more in terms of independent philosophical analysis.
There are three great Islamic philosophers before Averroes; Alfarabi (870-930), Avicenna (980-1037) and Algazali (1058-1111). Alfarabi is the least important of these, primarily significant because he is a pioneer in the invocation of Aristotle as a philosophical authority (thus paving the way for the Golden Age of Muslim Aristotelianism). He is said to have believed in the unity of the thought of Plato and Aristotle and his work shows a confluence of their theories, for example, in his claim that God is simultaneously identical with the 'neo-Platonic One' and with Aristotle's 'Self-Thinking Thought'. 

With Avicenna however, we find the development of a Muslim philosophy more independent of theological constraints as well as an Aristotelianism less apologetic to supposed Platonic doctrine. Thus, Avicenna rejects the conception of a divine creation of the world in time (God is contemporaneous with the world) and follows Aristotle in considering the primary aim of philosophy to be the study of being qua being.

Algazali represents a critical backlash against the Aristotelianism of Avicenna, within the Islamic tradition. In his celebrated text The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he attacks the inconsistency of the philosophical positions of Alfarabi and Avicenna with orthodox Koranic interpretation. What makes this work philosophically significant is that it does not rule out the possibility of philosophy de jure, but rather points to the misuse of philosophy by both of his predecessors. In particular, he was concerned with the philosophical theories of the eternity of the world and the denial of bodily resurrection, theories which he regarded not simply as theologically 'heterodox' but as the result of a misapplication of Aristotelian logical methods. It was in this critical context that Averroes' philosophy began to take shape. 

Averroes is generally regarded as the greatest of the Islamic philosophers of the Medieval period and indeed one of the greatest Medieval philosophers. Nicknamed 'The Commentator' (because of his incisive commentaries on Aristotle), Averroes' thought has two main strands. 

On the one side, he seeks to rid Islamic Aristotelianism of what he reads as a neo-Platonic bias which conflates the very different philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Here, he is critical of both Alfarabi and Avicenna. On the other side, he is also intent on undermining Algazali's criticisms of Aristotelianism. In his ironically titled (but nonetheless intently serious) response to Algazali, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, Averroes seeks to philosophically defend a consistent Aristotelianism, freed from Neo-platonic residue and theological prejudice. In so doing, he creates a complicated relation between his philosophy and his religious tradition.

In defending a consistent Aristotelianism, Averroes is critical of philosophical compromises made in the name of theological orthodoxy. He grounds this conviction in a three-tiered conception of truth, which privileges what he terms 'demonstrative truth' (i.e. philosophical truth) over what he terms 'dialectical' and 'rhetorical' truth (both of these being under the province of theology). Algazali, for Averroes, confuses the two categories of religious truth with that of philosophical truth, seeking to subordinate the category of reason to the category of revelation. But this is simply to repeat the dogmas of Islamic theology, with little philosophical relevance.

In contrast, the work of Alfarabi and Avicenna lays claim to philosophical relevance and seeks to distance itself from the mere repetition of theological orthodoxy. Nonetheless, according to Averroes, the philosophical systems of Alfarabi and Avicenna both fall into the category of theological rather than philosophical truth. This is perhaps more clearly the case with Alfarabi, whose work shows a certain caution in its attempt to be consistent with Islamic orthodoxy (notably in Alfarabi's defence of the doctrine of creation of the world in time). However, Avicenna had already begun to distance himself from these theological residues and, for example, is explicit in his avowal of the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world. 

Despite this apparent philosophical progression, Averroes remains critical of what he sees as implicit deferral to orthodoxy on crucial philosophical points. Thus, he censures Avicenna's theory that 'essence precedes existence'. Rather, for Averroes, existence precedes essence. He is also critical of Avicenna's proofs of the existence of God from the relation of necessity to contingency, as this argument imports too much metaphysical baggage for Averroes' liking. Rather, any proofs of God's existence must avoid metaphysics de jure and rely on physical causation alone. 

In both these cases, it is arguable that Avicenna is in fact closer to the literal meaning of Aristotle's original texts than Averroes and that Averroes is already moving beyond mere commentary on Aristotle, to something approaching an independent philosophical system. Whatever the truth of this hypothesis, it is undeniable that Averroes has certainly succeeded in releasing Islamic philosophy from the fetters of Islamic theological dogma. In this context, it is perhaps not surprising to find that Averroes did not find too many disciples within Islam itself. His real influence was to lie beyond the boundaries of his own culture. 

With hindsight, it is clear that Averroes was too radical a figure to be compatible with any of the religious orthodoxies of the medieval period. His work, which privileges philosophical reason (what he terms 'demonstrative truth') over theological revelation ('dialectical' and 'rhetorical' truth), looks forward to the modern paradigm of an independent rational enquiry. Nonetheless, the influence of his work was powerfully felt in the later medieval period, albeit rather negatively. An understanding of this negative reaction is crucial to an understanding not simply of the development of later medieval thought (in particular, that of Christianity), but to an understanding of the formation of the modern Western identity.

The crucial figure in understanding Averroes in the context of later medieval thought is Siger of Brabant (1240-1284). Siger is referred to as a 'Christian Averroist', a phrase which perfectly captures the assimilation of Islamic thought into later Christianity. The Christian Averroists represented the most radical assimilation of Muslim Aristotelianism, adhering to Averroes' supremacy of reason over revelation and the theory of the eternity of the world. Such heterodox views brought Siger and the Averroists into conflict with the Established Church and many of their propositions were rejected in the Condemnation of 1277. 

What is doubly significant is that several of the theories of the more orthodox (and historically influential) Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) were also condemned in 1277. The condemned Thomist propositions were exclusively those which Thomas himself had assimilated from Islamic thought, in particular the view that individuation depended on matter rather than form. 

Apart from the explicitly condemned propositions however, it is clear that the 1277 Condemnation is an admission of the extraordinary 'contamination' of pure Christian dogma by Christian philosophy (under the influence of Islamic thought). Without Islamic Aristotelianism there would certainly be no Christian Aristotelianism, and although the Condemnation is an attempt to reinforce the Augustinianism of earlier Christianity, it is the Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas which eventually won the day.