{"id":31915,"date":"2019-04-16T12:12:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T16:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/?p=31915"},"modified":"2026-06-06T00:38:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T04:38:52","slug":"dialogue-on-the-renaissance-good-or-bad-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/2019\/04\/dialogue-on-the-renaissance-good-or-bad-thing.html","title":{"rendered":"Dialogue on the Renaissance: Good or Bad Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

This occurred spontaneously on one of my Facebook threads. I argued that it was mostly \u201cgood\u201d; my dialogue opponent, William C. Michael, thought the opposite (with some eventual minor qualifications). His words will be in blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

The danger of all of the Christian energy wasted on political action is that, eventually, it leads to a let-down, as the Crusades led to the Renaissance. We\u2019re not supposed to be exhausting our energy in politics and when we do, the result is moral regression. These laws all flow from the movement that produced a religion-free Constitution, through which human society has regressed. What do you expect from the Constitution? Christian morality?<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the cause. This country preserved Christian morality in law for the most part till 50 years ago. If it was the fault of the Constitution, it took 175 years for the cause to kick in. That makes no sense. I say the cause is the sexual revolution: especially starting with widespread use of the Pill in 1960. That and taking God out of the schools, combined with legal abortion in 1973, and welfare laws that decimated families, is all it took to set the ball well in motion. All that occurred from 1960 to 1973. It took another generation for it to fully cause society and Christian civilization to break down. So we\u2019re there now, and see the crumbling walls all around us. We all live in a moral sewer now.<\/p>\n

The Pill wasn\u2019t conceived (haha) and designed by the people who used it. This is all the fruit of the Renaissance, come on. The Founding Fathers had no original ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Checks and balances was semi-original . . . The Pill also brought us abortion, as the legal precedent of the so-called \u201cright to privacy.\u201d It all goes back to that. First you pervert sexuality by this insane separation, then by separating it from childbirth: by slaughtering children. If we have to trace it back hundreds of years, it\u2019s the so-called \u201cEnlightenment\u201d and theological liberalism afterwards, that started the ball in motion, slowly . . . not to mention socialism \/ Communism.<\/p>\n

Francis Bacon freed thought from religion and tradition. The \u201cNew\u201d Method, replacing the \u201cOld\u201d Method (Aristotle) named \u201cman the measure of all things\u201d after the classical relativism was strangled nearly to death by the Christians. I will go to my grave blaming the post-Christian West on Bacon. I don\u2019t know how any Catholic can\u2019t clearly see that as the turning point.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Renaissance was within a Christian framework for the most part, whereas the \u201cEnlightenment\u201d was not at all: it was violently anti-Christian and anti-science also.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d argue that they were equally anti-Christian, only that one was nearer to the point of departure than the other, like Harvard in 1860 and Harvard in 1960.<\/span><\/p>\n

No; you can have \u201cman is the measure of all things\u201d but under God, as a steward of His creation, which is entirely Christian, or \u201cman is the measure of all things\u201d without a God, which is wicked and leads to Communism, Nazism, and abortion-on-demand. The first is the Renaissance; the second the \u201cEnlightenment\u201d and classical Marxism leading to Communism.<\/p>\n

The problem is that the \u201crenaissance man\u201d who was the measure of all things was already leaning away from God. Yes, there are exceptions like Thomas More and Erasmus, but they are not representative of the spirit of the age. They, like Dante, were transitional figures.<\/span><\/p>\n

Any good thing can be distorted by Satan for his ends, too; hence, the Renaissance might be seen as good but later distorted and taken in a secular \/ atheist direction. Or we can see it as rotten to the core. I just don\u2019t see the latter. Parts of it were secular, but as a whole, no. For example, Scholasticism was distorted and twisted by the nominalists . . .<\/p>\n

Yes, but we don\u2019t try to suggest that nominalism was \u201cunder God\u201d\u2026it was aversion to the truth that already was known and taught, as I\u2019d argue the Renaissance was. The good in the Renaissance was inherited from what preceded it, as in Anglicanism or Puritanism. What it brought to the world was bad because what was better was being abandoned.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that is because things are taken to the extreme by men. So if the Renaissance says, \u201cman is good, too [and promotes art, science, architecture, etc.] \u2014 under God; made in His image\u201d that is distorted to saying that man is the center of everything, without God. It\u2019s the difference between the emphasis of a formerly neglected thing, and making the emphasis the be-all and end-all.<\/p>\n

I would argue that that is not a consistent development of Renaissance thought, because God had to be in there and couldn\u2019t be taken out. It\u2019s a corruption and distortion of it; whereas atheism, Marxism, and the moral rot we see today are perfectly consistent with the antinomian, violent, mob-run, viciously anti-Catholic and anti-traditional \u201cEnlightenment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Michael Fraley<\/em>: I have to wonder if a large part of my own prejudice against the Renaissance is rooted in the post-Enlightenment framing of it by historians, scholars, etc. \u2013 the concept that the medieval period was a barren wasteland, and suddenly, during the Renaissance, God was slowly shrugged off and there was a rebirth of smart people.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes; clearly, secularists use it in that way, so that in hindsight many see it as a \u201cbad\u201d thing on the road to agnosticism, secularism, and atheist supposed \u201cenlightenment.\u201d<\/p>\n

That strongly influences how we view it (great point you make, as usual). In\u00a0truth it was a mostly Catholic revival of culture, that became corrupted by the devil and some folks, and co-opted, complete with the usual revisionist history brought in as an aid towards that end.<\/p>\n

Scholasticism was one Catholic revival of learning and culture, the Renaissance another and different one. I don\u2019t see that they have to be opposed at all. It\u2019s simply secular society never giving Christianity (and above all, Catholicism: the root of all evils!) credit for anything; just as we\u2019re given no credit for our central role in the rise of modern science<\/a> (or universities, or hospitals, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum<\/em>), either.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

(originally 3-20-13 on Facebook)<\/p>\n

Photo credit:\u00a0<\/strong>The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius<\/i>\u00a0(1486), by Carlo Crivelli (c. 1435- c. 1495)<\/span> [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a>]<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This occurred spontaneously on one of my Facebook threads. I argued that it was mostly \u201cgood\u201d; my dialogue opponent, William C. Michael, thought the opposite (with some eventual minor qualifications). 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Dave has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated Catholic radio shows, including \"Catholic Answers Live\" (twice), \"Faith and Family Live\" (Steve Wood), \"Kresta in the Afternoon,\" \"Son Rise Morning Show,\" \"Catholic Connection\" (Teresa Tomeo), and \"The Catholics Next Door.\" His large and popular website, \"Biblical Evidence for Catholicism,\" was online from March 1997 to March 2007, and received the 1998 Catholic Website of the Year award from \"Envoy Magazine.\" His blog of the same name (now transferred to Patheos), begun in February 2004, contains more than 1,500 papers, at least 500 debates or dialogues, and over 50 distinct \"index\" web pages. Unsolicited correspondence has indicated many hundreds of conversions (or returns) to the Catholic faith as a result, by God's grace, of these writings. Dave's conversion story was published in the bestselling book \"Surprised by Truth\" (edited by Patrick Madrid; San Diego: Basilica Press, 1994). Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \"The Catholic Verses\" (2004), \"The One-Minute Apologist\" (2007), \"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\" (2009), \"The Quotable Newman\" (editor: 2012), and \"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \"The New Catholic Answer Bible\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. Chesterton\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \"Quotable Wesley\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. 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