[WATCH] Why Has The West Been So Successful?
There’s a fascinating video published by conservative media organisation Prager University, entitled 'Why has the West been so successful?'. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire and author of the book, 'The Right Side of History'. explains that the twin pillars of revelation and reason — emanating from ancient Jerusalem and Athens — form the bedrock for Western civilization's unprecedented success.
It's worth a watch, and there's much to affirm. But I also have some concerns, which I'll share below the video:
1. What I loved about the video
The first half of the video was brilliant. As Shapiro points out, the West is far from morally blameless:
The left likes to focus on the bad—genocide, slavery, environmental destruction. But those have been present in every civilization from time immemorial.
Yes. We live in a Genesis 3 world, where all cultures, races and individuals are sinful. That includes both western and non-western people. It's not like those outside the west have lived in some state of paradise, at peace with the earth and one another. Tribal warfare, slavery, even infanticide have been present in some form in nearly every culture.
But something happened in the West, which didn't happen anywhere else (at least not in the same way, nor to the same degree):
The positives are unique to the West—religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method: these are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim.
Spot on. The question is not: why did bad things happen in the West? Bad things happened everywhere. Rather, the question is why good things happened, and on such an unprecedented scale:
Why was slavery abolished? Why was racism wound back? Why did universal human rights (as opposed to rights for aristocratic men) come to be accepted as the norm?
Something happened in the West, and Shapiro (rightly, in my view) says it is in large part because of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and he adds the notion of reason inherited from Athens.
2. My Reservations About The Video
Whilst I love the first half of the video, the second half raises questions for me. Shapiro points out that is 'reason' that is the somehow opposed to 'faith', and in tension with it. Somehow we need reason from outside the Bible, if we're to be reasonable people who don't go down the fundamentalist route.
Without Greek reason, we fall into fanaticism – the belief that fundamentalist adherence to unprovable principles represents the only path toward meaning.
While it's a popular view, it assumes a number of things.
First, that the opposite of reason is faith, and having faith is almost an abandonment of reason.
But this isn't the case - not in the Biblical worldview, nor in real life. In the Bible, reason is not the opposite of faith: the opposite of faith is sight. Speaking of how we live in this age, the apostle Paul says:
...for we walk by faith, not by sight.'
2 Cor 4:7
Furthermore, reason is found everywhere in the Bible. God appeals to the Israelites on the basis of reason. Abraham 'reasoned' (yes, that's the word the Bible uses) that God could raise his son Isaac. Jesus argues for the kingdom of God based on reason. And the apostle Paul uses reason and logic throughout his letters.
Reason is inherent in the Bible, because as theologian John Frame argues, 'Logic is a property of God'.
However, the Bible is against our using unaided human reason alone to figure life out. Human reason alone is problematic: we can't decide on right and wrong using human reason alone. Indeed, the very notion of universal human rights, care for the vulnerable, abolition of slavery (to name a few things secular people value) did not arise from secular thinkers (although secular thinkers have adopted it): it arose from an explicitly Judeo-Christian worldview.
Overall, though, it is a thought-provoking video that will hopefully shift the cultural narrative toward a more considered view of the strengths, weaknesses and history of the western world.