This timeline is based on the book "What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?" by D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcomb. More information about this book is here.
The prophets of the ancient god Baal and his wife Astarte customarily sacrificed children during their service in the temple. Early in this century, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago excavated several sites in Samaria (considered "the cultural center of Ahab's time") and unearthed the ruins of the temple of Astarte there.
In Rome or Greece in those days, abortions were rampant. Newborn babies could be thrown into the forest, or left on a mountain, where they were then eaten by wild animals, or they could die of hunger, or they could be picked up by people who walked at night and then did whatever they wanted with the children. Almost all children with birth defects were abandoned. Girls were often abandoned in this way, because women were considered inferior.
In addition, children who survived remained the property of their father, who could kill them if he wanted, sell them into slavery, deprive them of his property. Only about half of those born lived to be eight years old. Other causes besides infanticide were disease and starvation.
The book "Third Time Around" tells how the church successfully fought against abortion twice in the past and how it is leading the fight against it again today. In it, George Grant deepens our understanding of how little value human life had in ancient Rome:
According to the centuries-old tradition of paterfamilias - the tradition of honoring the father as the head of the family - the birth of a Roman was not recognized as a biological fact. Newborns were accepted into this world only with the consent of the family. The Roman did not have to have a child, he took it. If immediately after birth the family decided not to raise the child, in other words, in this case literally "raise it above the ground", then it was simply abandoned. Special elevations or walls were built on which the baby was placed and left to die.
But after the coming of Christ, the situation began to change. Jesus said: "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them." (Matthew 19:14) His words gave children an unusual importance for that time, stipulating a worthy attitude towards them. After Jesus said that God is our Father, it not only radically changed the relationship of parents to their children, but also fatherhood itself took on a completely different form.
Since then, Christians have treated life as sacred, even the life of a newborn child. In ancient Rome, Christians saved many Roman babies and raised them in the faith.
Today, there are about 3,000 centers in the United States, where Christians help thousands of pregnant women through a network of anti-abortion centers, despite the blockade from the media.
Before the spread of Christian influence, a woman's life was also valued cheaply. It was believed that a woman was the property of her husband. In Greece, Rome, India and China, it was believed and openly declared that women could not or were not capable of living an independent life on their own. Although there were cases of rape in Rome, especially in the 3rd century, some upper-class women fought for their independence. Aristotle said that a woman was born somewhere between a freeman and a slave. The life of a slave was worthless in ancient times. Baby girls were left to die much more often than boys, and their murder solely on the grounds of their sex was not unique to ancient Rome.
Adam Smith, in his book "The Wealth of Nations", written in 1776, describes that in all the large cities of China several newborns are thrown out into the street every night or drowned in water like puppies. This was only two hundred years ago, and before the influence of Jesus Christ and His teachings began to penetrate into China.
In the last two centuries, thanks to the modern missionary movement, the lives of women have improved greatly in dozens of countries and hundreds of tribes since the Gospel took root in these cultures. Take India for example. Before the spread of Christian influence in India, widows were burned - voluntarily or forcibly - with their dead husbands: this terrible custom is known as sati. This word literally means "good woman", and indicates that the Hindus considered a good woman to be one who followed her husband to the grave. Christians who came from the West were of course very shocked. Moreover, infanticide, especially the murder of female children, was widespread in India before the arrival of the great missionary William Carey.
Throughout history, many tribes and peoples have killed their elderly, to the same extent as parents get rid of unwanted babies. The Eskimos got rid of their elderly by leaving them on the ice in the open sea. Before Christ, the elderly were treated differently depending on the specific custom. With the coming of Christ, every human life, including the life of the elderly, received its own value. But of course, it is important to note that care for the elderly was not always the same as in our time. Until about 1892, only one in a hundred people lived to be 65 years old. Thanks to modern medicine, life expectancy has increased.
Today we notice how a movement called mercy killing, or euthanasia, is gaining momentum in society. As more and more people in the country move away from God and His principles, we are increasingly taking a pagan attitude towards human life.
The position of the slave in the ancient world was catastrophic. It was a picture of the terrible tyranny and degradation of the humanistic world, not to mention the very well-known difference between a slave and a free person. In Athens there was a law that allowed the testimony of a slave to be taken in court, only under the influence of alcohol, while the testimony of a free person was taken under oath. Among the Romans, if the owner of the house was killed, then all the slaves in the house were subject to death, execution or court battles. It was considered a generally accepted sign of hospitality when the owner offered a slave to a guest for the night, like any other convenience. But before abolishing slavery, Christians tried to bring slavery into another form, where morality and mercy were present.
Thanks to Christ and His teachings, Christians began to fight hard for the abolition of slavery throughout the world. For example, you can read about the fight against slavery in the USA.
In a short book of the Bible called "The Letter to Philemon," the apostle Paul writes from prison to Philemon, a wealthy Christian slave owner. Paul sends Philemon his letter with Philemon's slave Onesimus, who was in prison with Paul. Paul, who had brought both of them to Christ, tells Philemon in his letter: "Receive him (Onesimus), no longer as a slave, but as a brother." If Christianity in the first centuries had completely rejected slavery, the gospel could not have spread as it did in the era of the early church. But once it spread, the seeds were sown for the final abolition of slavery, which came later.
But slavery in later centuries spread again thanks to the Portuguese and the Spanish. From the time they found blacks in Africa. However, this was only done when people appeared who dedicated their lives to the fight for the abolition of the slave trade. A striking example of such people was William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament for decades. As a Christian public figure, he led a tireless fight to stop the supply of slaves from Africa to the West Indies. After twenty years of his struggle, Parliament finally adopted his bill on the prohibition of the slave trade. After that, he continued to free slaves in the British colonies. Despite constant resistance and ridicule, he continued to do his work, perceiving it as a service to Jesus Christ.
Before the spread of Christianity, people killed each other just for fun. The shedding of human blood captivated the masses. Gladiators, who were slaves in Rome, competed to the death. After one of the gladiators defeated another and brought the blade of his sword to his chest, he looked up at Caesar, who usually gave a signal by lowering his thumb down. Then the gladiator who defeated his opponent plunged his sword into the chest of the defeated, and the crowd enjoyed it. And this was the main entertainment before the spread of Christian influence on culture.
It is also known that many Christians were then maimed and eaten by lions to the cries of a mocking crowd. Tacitus says that Nero held a feast in his gardens, at which the main entertainment until the evening was the killing of Christians by wild beasts, crucifying them or burning them alive on bonfires. However, many viewers felt pity for these Christians, realizing that this bloody orgy was "not for the common good of mankind, but for the satisfaction of one man's mania." Such was the heartbreaking life before the coming of Christ!
Ted Baer and Dr. Bonnie Harvey wrote a critical article about the film "Alive", which partially touched on the topic of cannibalism, for the film magazine "Movie Guide: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment". Here is what they said about cannibalism:
From time immemorial until the advent of Christianity, cannibalism was very highly developed. In pots behind the walls of ancient cities, fragments of the bodies of the dead were kept, which were prepared to feed the poorest. For many centuries, in those regions where the gospel had not yet reached, people ate each other, being in the terrible mistake that by doing so they absorbed the strength of their enemies and became stronger than them. The Aztecs ate, in this way, tens of thousands of people in their unconditional thirst for power and strength. Nevertheless, wherever the gospel penetrated, cannibalism ceased, as people were reborn to a new life and began to see the sacredness of life.
In two centuries, the modern missionary movement spread the gospel throughout the world, creating more changes everywhere. And one of these changes is the almost complete destruction of cannibalism.
The pre-Christian world was like the Russian tundra - just as cold and harsh. Will Durand writes of ancient Rome as the leading civilization of antiquity: "Charity was of very modest proportions in this stingy society. Hospitality existed in the form of reciprocity at a time when inns were poor and located at great distances from each other; but Polybius' statement that in Rome no one gives anything to anyone if he can not give is undoubtedly an exaggeration."
Jesus set a great example of helping the poor, caring for the needy and oppressed. He requires His followers to do the same. One of His most famous parables is the parable of the good Samaritan, a vision of a man who stopped on his way and took care of a stranger who needed help. At that time, neither the priest nor the Levite offered to help the Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). This parable had a profound impact on Western civilization. So did His parable of the sheep and the goats, in which Christ says, “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). This teaching introduced the new concept of “beggars for Christ’s sake,” and those so called were treated as if they were Christ Himself!
Early Christians changed the course of history by their generosity to both other Christians and non-believers. Yale historian Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote that “by beginning to use money for the common good, Christianity introduced five significant innovations.” The first of these innovations, according to Latourette, was the necessity of doing good deeds to all who entered the ranks of Christians, regardless of their poverty or wealth. As for the motive, it was also new: now it was necessary to do good deeds out of love for Christ, since Christians taught that Jesus was rich, but became poor for our sakes, so that we through his poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).
Another innovation of Christian charity, according to Latourette, was that it was not limited to members of the church. They also did good deeds to non-Christians, so much so that the Roman emperor Julian, who tried to eradicate the Christian faith, was surprised to see how much Christians loved even the pagans - their enemies, as researched by Dr. Richard Todd, professor of history at Wichita State University. Historians one after another testify to the same thing: the early Church helped the poor a lot. Will Durand says that the early church attracted people to its ranks by offering a contrast to the Roman callousness of heart.
Fox also notes the contrast between pagan charity and Christian charity: "Whereas in pagan cities grain was distributed exclusively to the poor, and usually to the well-to-do, Christian charity was given to the most needy."
Furthermore, Fox notes that while in rare cases some pagan emperors before Constantine may have had programs to help the less fortunate, these programs were very meager and clearly intended for those who would later serve in the military. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, expanded the scope of charity.
Will Durand also notes that the church's charity towards the poor reached "new heights" in the later Middle Ages.
If you look at how much Christians are currently involved in charity, it becomes clear how much this has changed the lives of people, especially the poor. On an international scale, the church plays a significant role in helping those in need through missionary organizations, for example, through the activities of various denominations. Similarly, groups such as the humanitarian organization "World Relief" work directly with the church to provide assistance to those in need. Interchurch organizations such as "World Vision International", "Samaritan's Purse", the Christian Children's Aid Fund and the international mission "Compassion" work on the same principle.
Every school we see, whether public or private, regional or secular, is a visible reminder of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The same applies to a college or university. It is thanks to the church and church communities that educational institutions were created. The very idea of accessibility of education for the masses has its origins in Christianity. Before the spread of Christianity, education was only for a select few. The phenomenon of the university also has its roots in the Christian faith. All the greatest universities in the world were established by Christians for Christian purposes: Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other universities.
Primary education is not the only gift of Christians to the world in the academic sphere; the university as a phenomenon also originates from the Christian church. Universities appeared only in the late Middle Ages. The historian of New York University, Joseph Reiter, wrote that universities are an invention of the Middle Ages. Professor J. Hyde, who taught medieval history at the University of Manchester until his death in 1986, argued that all universities in the world descended from three prototypes: Oxford, Paris and Bologna. All three universities were founded at the same time - in 1200 AD with a difference of ten years. In Oxford and Paris, the main subjects were Christian theology, and to a lesser extent, Aristotelian logic. In Bologna, the main subjects of study were canon (ecclesiastical) and civil law.
Rashdoll also gave a generally accepted definition of the university: "A guild of scholastics, both students and teachers, engaged in teaching and research." According to this definition, the university as a phenomenon arose in the Christian West, and its main subject of study is Christian theology, and in the case of the University of Bologna, also Christian and civil law. Cambridge was founded in England later than these three universities. Other universities appeared in medieval Europe, where the presbytery or other church official authorized teachers to establish schools in addition to the church school in the vicinity of his church. In other early universities, the main subjects were the teachings of the Church Fathers and Grand Masters of the Church, as well as the most difficult to understand local Christian doctrine. Aristotelian and Greek philosophy were also studied. However, the basis of all subjects was Christian theology, which was taught by Christians.
Almost all of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States have Christian roots. They were founded by Christians for Christian purposes - the training of preachers. As Dr. Paul Lee Tenn asserted:
Every educational institution that was founded in the colonies before the Revolutionary War, except the University of Pennsylvania, was founded by some branch of the Christian church. Even at the University of Pennsylvania, the evangelist George Whitefield played an important role.
Christians were often called “people of the book,” meaning literate. Dr. D. Douglas, editor-in-chief of the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, writes: “From its inception, the religion of the Bible went hand in hand with enlightenment.” Even in the Middle Ages, when most people were illiterate, it was Christian priests and monks who preserved what little knowledge there was.
The writing of many of the world’s languages was created by Christian missionaries so that people could read the Bible for themselves. Many tribal languages are now being codified by Christian missionaries, for example, the Wycliffe Bible Mission, which is doing this work in remote regions of the world.
A famous example of Christian translation of an unwritten language into a written language is the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius (889 and 885). These two brothers came from Thessalonica to Moravia (central Czechoslovakia) and became known as the "Apostles of the South Slavs". It is believed that they developed the Cyrillic alphabet to translate the Bible and liturgy into Slavic. Cyril himself may not have been the author of the alphabet that bears his name, but tradition and the legendary "Life of Cyril" attribute this authorship to him. Today, more than 200 million people, speaking more than 100 languages, use Cyrillic in their writing.
Charles Hull Wolf, a doctor of history, notes that constitutional order and freedom are a legacy given to us by God in the Abrahamic covenant and found their highest embodiment in the American Constitution. When Moses made a covenant with God and the Jewish people, this covenant marked the beginning of political freedom. For example, in Exodus 19:5 God said to Israel: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” The people agreed to this, as recorded in verse 8.
The Constitution of the United States is, as the skeptical historian H. G. Wells put it, “unmistakably Christian”. Since most of the framers of the U.S. Constitution were practicing Christians who drew their political philosophy from the Bible and other Christian sources, it is not surprising that they embodied many biblical principles in the Constitution. Here are a few of them:
Jesus Christ is the greatest emancipator in the history of the world. The freedom we enjoy in the world we owe to Christ and His Word. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). Wherever the Word has gone, tyrants have trembled, despots have been dethroned, and the people have become free. The great freedoms we enjoy in this country we owe primarily to the Word of God. Andrew Jackson said, "This Book, sir, is the rock upon which our republic rests" (meaning the book the Bible, and the country the United States). When this Book is taken away, I assure you, the freedoms you enjoy will be taken away with it.
It may sound paradoxical, but the interfaith struggle among Christians in the American colonies before the founding of the United States contributed to the creation of the universal freedom of religion that exists in this country. Two Christians who lived in the 17th century paved the way for greater freedom of conscience - the Baptist Roger Williams, a Puritan dissident, the founder of Rock Island, and the Quaker William Penn. Although Roger Williams obviously could not agree with the views of several people, his assurance that "the state should not abridge the freedom of conscience of the individual" made a significant contribution to the development of civil liberties in America. William Penn, whose name is immortalized in the name of the state he founded (Pennsylvania), granted freedom of conscience to all residents and communicated with the Indians with Christian love and justice. He called Pennsylvania "The Holy Experiment." Penn established a law known as the "Structure of Government," which "granted such freedom of religion as no country in the world at that time could tolerate."
In the eighteenth century, the founders of this country were tired of watching one denomination dominate another. They had seen the Quakers persecuted. And they had also watched with great alarm as the Baptists in Virginia were thrown into prison for preaching the gospel without proper license, since that colony had a state church, a branch of the Church of England. The founders of this country, themselves predominantly Christian, nevertheless did not want any one denomination to have a monopoly of the state.
In fact, this was one of the threats that is rarely mentioned now, which American patriots clearly saw, and which throws more light on what the Americans risked by starting the War for Independence. Dr. M. Bradford of the University of Dallas said that the patriots feared that if they lost this war, one of the punitive actions of England against the colony would be to extend the power of the Anglican Church to the entire country, including the states founded by the Pilgrims, Puritans and Quakers. All the religious freedom that had been won in 150 years of American history would be lost! Moreover, the Americans feared that if the English won the war, they would send British bishops to govern the Americans. The Americans did not want this, for example, George Washington. Therefore, American patriots from different denominations fought together: Presbyterians and Baptists, New England Congregationalists and Anglicans, Catholics from Baltimore and Huguenots from Pennsylvania. And after they won the war, freedom of conscience became so important to the founding of this country that a major incentive for the Constitution was that it guaranteed religious freedom. That is why religious freedom is listed first in the Bill of Rights.
It stated that America had no state church, but freedom of conscience. In the 19th century, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story noted that the First Amendment was capable of solving an age-old problem that had plagued the Christian world: "It (the First Amendment) thus cut off all possibility of religious persecution (which was the vice and ulcer of previous ages) and of abolishing freedom of conscience in matters of religion, which had been despised from almost apostolic times to our own time."
What is the relationship between science and Christianity? Skeptics and various kinds of non-believers have written books and articles for many years, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, in which they claim that science and Christianity are two opposite poles, that they are diametrically opposed to each other and have nothing in common. And a person must choose: either to be a superstitious religious fanatic, as they "exalt" a Christian, or a scientist; as if it were impossible to be both at the same time. In the books of modern non-believing authors who are concerned about the problems of ecology, it is now claimed that Christianity gave rise to science and, accordingly, Christians are to blame for everything that is happening.
Where did science actually come from? It all began six hundred years before Christ with Greek philosophers who began to search for a non-theological answer to the question of the existence of life and the structure of the natural world. Efforts were made in the proto-scientific direction. However, the Greeks did not create anything that would resemble modern science. They looked at nature more as an excuse to practice Greek sophistry. They saw no point in changing the world, no need to use it, they thought the world was just to be understood – it was just some kind of gymnastics for the mind.
Dr. Malcolm Jeeves ponders the question of why the Greeks did not go further in their scientific pursuits in his book "The Scientific Breakthrough and the Christian Faith". He notes that the unique combination of Greek thought with a particular branch of Christianity, namely the Reformed faith, gave rise to modern science. Jeeves writes:
It was with the new discovery of the Bible and its new reading at the time of the Reformation ... that the impetus for the development of science was given. This new reading of the Bible, along with all that was best in Greek thought, was destined to create that critical mass that gave rise to the chain reaction that ultimately led to the scientific nuclear explosion that began in the 16th century – the century of the beginning of the scientific revolution, which has continued and is gaining momentum today.
Science could not arise and did not arise not only among the Greeks, but also among the Jewish people for the simple reason that for the Jews, as you remember from the Psalms, nature was simply a reason for the praise of the Creator. "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 18:2).
Modern science could not arise among the Arabs either because of the Muslim religion. Aristotle's works, thought to have been lost to the Western world between about 500 and 1100, were preserved by the Arabs of North Africa and were returned to Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Unlike Plato, Aristotle's philosophy was more in line with a scientific approach to the study of nature, since it was based more on induction, while Platonic philosophy was based on a deductive way of thinking. Plato creates an ideal and then deduces all that exists from it. Aristotle, on the other hand, is more inclined to study the particular and then go to the general, to the principles that he induces from this particular. Due to the fact that the Arabs, including the Nestorian Christians, had access to Aristotelian thought, they generally made a greater contribution to the advancement of science in general and mathematics in particular than the Europeans in the Middle Ages. However, during all this time, the Arabs never created a single branch of scientific knowledge. And why? All this because of religion. Because of the fanaticism that prevails in the Muslim religion. If everything is fatalistically determined, then obviously there is no point in trying to influence the natural world in order to change something in it, since everything in it is unchangeable.
Science could never have arisen among the animists in Central or South Africa or any other part of the world, because they would never have begun to experiment with the natural world, because, according to their reasoning, gods or ancestral spirits live in everything - in stones, trees and animals.
Science could not have arisen in India among the Hindus, and in China among the Buddhists, because both Hinduism and Buddhism teach that the physical world is unreal, and that the only reality is the reality of the world soul, and therefore the great truth that everyone must grasp is the statement that the world is unreal. Accordingly, there is no point in wasting one's life studying something that is not reality in the first instance.
Christianity had to first arise, then branch out into several currents, then these currents had to intertwine together in order to create in the 16th century the phenomenon that we know today as modern science. It arose because of the existence of several basic teachings of Christianity. First of all, this is the teaching that God is intelligent, that He is the source of all truth, and that this world is a rational world. This provided the ground on which it became possible to formulate scientific laws.
It is interesting to note that science could not have arisen under the philosophical worldview that prevails in the world today. For the Western world today is dominated by existentialism, which is irrational. Science could not have developed under an irrational worldview, since it is based on the fact that if water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit today, it will boil at 212 degrees tomorrow and the day after, and that there are indisputable laws and patterns that govern the universe. All of this arises from the Christian concept of a God who created the world - a rational God who also created the world rational. Modern science, notes Francis Schaefer, began when the Aristotelian view of the universe was challenged, from a scientific point of view. What was at stake in the Copernican revolution? Many modern secularists will tell you that what was at stake was biblical cosmology. In fact, Copernicus destroyed Aristotelian cosmology to its foundations. The Church wrongly and recklessly condemned Galileo Galilei in 1632 for accepting the Aristotelian approach to the Bible. Schaeffer concludes:
The foundation of modern science, one might say, was laid at Oxford, when the teachings there were criticized by the scholars of Thomas Aquinas, who proved that his great authority, Aristotle, had made some errors in his view of natural phenomena. The Roman Church persecuted Copernicus and Galileo (1564-1642), but not because there was anything in their teachings that actually contradicted the Bible. Thus the church authorities reasoned that Galileo's ideas contradicted the Bible, while in fact they contradicted church doctrine, or rather, the Aristotelian elements that this doctrine had absorbed. In fact, Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernican views with the Bible, and this was one of the reasons that led to his persecution.
In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has publicly repented for its condemnation of Galileo, and the pope has reaffirmed the important place of science in the life of humanity.
Why is America, and indeed the entire West, so materially prosperous? Why have some Asian countries also achieved prosperity after adopting economic ideas from the West? Looking at the poor peoples of the world, you will come to the conclusion about the truth of what the Bible says: they are as they are because they think so about themselves. "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." (Proverbs 23:7). Look at India – a country that has been in trouble for several thousand years. And why? All because of what this people believes. Their Hindu religion teaches that the material is unreal, that the external, visible world is unreal; and if so, then there is no point in trying to fix an unreal world, one must try to get out of it. There can be no thought of any progress here. And the belief in reincarnation has also made a very large contribution to the consolidation of the devastating living conditions of this people. Or take North Africa, which has been mired in hardship, superstition, and ignorance for centuries. And why? All because of what this people believes. The fatalism of Islam did not give Muslims the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of progress, because a person can do absolutely nothing of his own free will, and everything he does has already been determined by Allah; with such a vision, the only prospect is eternal stagnation. Or look at many peoples of the East (before the spread of Western influence on them), whose religion is Buddhism, which teaches that life is irreparably vicious, and nothing can be changed. The only way out for a person in this case is to abandon any desire to somehow improve this life. The goal here is not a fuller life, but on the contrary, its extinction – dissolution in the world soul, and thus it stops any desire to improve this life. The picture is completely different among peoples who have a Christian foundation, especially those who have more biblical ideas about economics.
Larry Burkett, founder and director of Christian Financial Concepts, points out that the Bible, which contains over seven hundred references to money, speaks more about economics than it does about many other subjects. He writes:
Money is such an important subject that about two-thirds of the teachings that Christ left us deal with its use and management. This alone shows the importance of understanding God's plan for finances.
What does the Bible say about economics? In the Ten Commandments alone, we find an unequivocal endorsement of private property, the foundation of any small, efficient economy. The commandment, "Thou shalt not steal" (Exodus 20:15), which has been proclaimed by virtually every theologian for twenty centuries, is the divine guarantee of private property. I cannot steal anything from you that does not belong to you. Moreover, in the Ten Commandments we even find the following command: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house... anything that is your neighbor's" (Exodus 20:17). Again, a clear instruction about private property.
Private property is a very important topic because it forms the basis of capitalism, which is often defined as "private ownership of the means of production." John Chamberlain, in The Roots of Capitalism, explains:
The commandment 'Thou shalt not steal' means that the Bible approves of private property, that is, if no one first takes possession of a thing, then its appropriation can hardly be called theft. The commandment 'Thou shalt not covet...' means that it is sinful even to contemplate taking possession of what belongs to another person - a maxim for the violation of which socialists, both Christian and non-Christian, have never been able to find a witty excuse. Moreover, the prohibitions against perjury and adultery mean that it is necessary to keep contracts and avoid. As for the commandment 'Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long on the earth', it means that it is the family, not the state, that is the cell and the basic element of society.
By analogy, or deduction, Locke's entire credo can be expressed in the following words: the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to property necessary for the maintenance of life, and the value of a voluntary family union as a guarantor (through mutual love and common ownership of property) of the "long" days on earth given by the Lord.
Christianity has made significant advances in the field of health care. To begin with, the Christian way of life is in itself healthy. Further, Christianity played an important role in the development of such a social institution as the hospital, so important that some historians attribute to Christianity the creation of the hospital itself. The example and teachings of Jesus inspired ministers, priests, monks, nuns, missionaries, and countless parishioners to provide medical care to the poor in almost every country in the world. Western medicine was often brought by missionaries to third-world countries or to primitive cultures. In short, if Jesus had not come, medicine would not have been so widespread and would never have shown so much mercy. In ancient times, the Jews left the pagan world far behind them in terms of sanitary standards and customs. God revealed to them many rules for a healthy lifestyle in the ritual part of the book of the law. Roberto Margotta, in his book "History of Medicine," writes:
The importance of ancient Hebrew medicine from a historical point of view lies in the fact that it laid the foundation of public hygiene thanks to the regulations contained in the Bible. The principles of bodily cleanliness, nutrition and diet, obstetrics and pediatrics were set forth and enshrined in the form of canons in the book of Leviticus. Faith in one God denied the use of magical rites.
The Gospels record that Jesus Christ healed the sick. He could even heal "at a distance," simply by saying a word, after which the one who was in another place recovered (Matthew 8:5-13). Christ's teachings took on a tangible form through His ministry of healing. Each case of healing became an eloquent sermon, confirming the truth that He is Lord even over sickness and death. He told us to go and do the same – to care for the poor and the sick. Over the next two thousand years, millions of Christians went and did the same.
We see that before the spread of Christ's influence, only a few nations had a few places where the sick were gathered, and even those were in their infancy. Examples of such places are the military hospitals for Roman soldiers, and in Ancient Greece the temples of Aesculapius, where superstition reigned, and where the sick were exploited by unscrupulous priests.
Before the coming of Jesus Christ, life was cruel, and caring for the useless sick was not a priority. For example, the Roman philosopher of the egoistic school Plautus said: "A man is a wolf to another man if he does not know him." In his study of partial Christian charity, writer John Jefferson Davis notes how cruel that era was in terms of caring for the sick: "In the pre-Christian Roman Empire, hospitals existed only for soldiers, gladiators, and slaves. Artisans and other poor people had no shelter. People were afraid of death and rarely cared for the sick, often driving them out of their homes and leaving them to their fate." However, hospitals as we know them appeared due to the spread of the influence of Christianity. The love and example of Jesus Christ encouraged a change in attitude towards the sick. Even today, the names of many clinics betray their Christian origin – Baptist Hospital, Presbyterian St. Luke's, Holy Cross Hospital, etc. – although in several of them not a trace of Christianity remains.
Many hospitals were originally not so much "health factories" as hotels. Many of the early hospitals were not only for the sick; they were often also shelters for the poor. Colin Jones, Senior Lecturer in History and Archaeology at the University of Exeter, writes: "If we make a bold generalization from the scanty evidence we find in the extremely scanty archival material, it is quite probable that before 1450 or 1500 only the large hospitals in the large cities had doctors on their staff." This trend can be observed as far back as the seventeenth century, at least in France. Richelieu's dictionary of 1680 defines a hospital as "a place for the shelter of the poor who had no means of subsistence, where special care was taken for their salvation." Until the 19th century, hospitals were built for the poor, not for everyone. The wealthy were treated at home. The first hospitals were poor institutions, however well-intentioned they were. After the 19th-century discoveries in bacteriology by the Christian Louis Pasteur, and in antiseptic surgery by Joseph Lister, also a Christian, hospitals became much safer places and were used by a wide range of people. Lister was a Quaker. Louis Pasteur wrote: "I believe in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity." However poor the hospitals were at first, they gave rise to the modern hospital. Without Christ, hospitals as we know them would not exist.
After the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the 4th century, Christians began to build hospitals in a wide variety of cities, sometimes even in the "most remote and dangerous" ones, to provide shelter for Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land; some of these pilgrims traveled without money, relying on the generosity of "other hospitable Christians." These hospitals were neither hotels nor hospitals in the strict sense of the word; they were something in between. In 325, the Council of Nicaea, along with the official recognition of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as set forth in Scripture, made another decree that played a major role in the history of hospitals. It required hospitals to be established wherever churches were established. And Donald Snook, Jr. writes: "The history of many great hospitals has its roots in the era immediately following the Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the bishops of the churches were commanded to go to all the cathedral cities of Christendom and in each of them to establish a hospital." St. Basil of Caesarea (329-379) is considered the founder of the first Christian hospital dedicated entirely to the service of the sick. George Grant says that the hospitals of St. Basil were the very first "non-ambulatory hospitals," that is, medical institutions with beds; Grant says that before Basil all hospitals were, by and large, "ambulatory clinics." Roberto Margotta writes of the hospital of St. Basil: "It had as many departments as there were diseases to be treated, and it resembled in places a small town, including also a colony for lepers. Thus, love of neighbor, which also included care and attention for the sick, extended even to lepers, who had previously been treated in isolation from society." It is believed that the first leper house in the Western world was built in Rome by a wealthy Christian woman named Fabiola, a disciple of St. Jerome, around the year 480.
The oldest hospital still in operation today is the Hôtel Dieu (Hotel of God) in Paris, founded by Saint Landry around 600. It was also a medical institution. Snook says: "Even by modern standards, this first French hospital could be safely called a medical center, since it combined many different activities for the care of the sick." The oldest hospital in the New World still operating today is the Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth in Mexico City, founded by Cortes in 1524.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was the founder of modern nursing. She drew much of her inspiration for her work from the example of Jesus Christ. She was a highly pious person. Although her theological views were, unfortunately, sometimes different from those generally accepted, she could not have accomplished what she was able to do without the example of Christ. She was influenced by the Lutheran pastor in Germany, Theodor Fledner, who established the ministry of deaconesses in the Lutheran church. Nightingale became known as the "woman with the lamp" because of the way she provided assistance to the wounded during the Crimean War between Britain and France against Russia, which made her a national heroine almost overnight. Returning to England, she published a major work called "Notes on the Sick", which was published in 1859. In 1860, she opened the Nightingale School for Nursing at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. This is considered to have marked the beginning of modern nursing.
Early in this century, writer Cynthia Pearl Maus drew an analogy from some of the greatest masterpieces of art, poetry, music, and storytelling dedicated to Jesus. Here is what she writes in the introduction to her book, entitled Christ and the Visual Arts:
More poems have been written about Christ, more stories told, more pictures painted, and more songs sung about him than about any other person in human history, because only in this way can the deepest gratitude and appreciation of the human heart be more fully expressed.
The Christian revelation of God is very different from that of other religions. The awe-inspiring God of the Jews becomes human in Jesus Christ. The infinite becomes temporal and accessible to the human eye!
In the first three centuries of its existence, the church produced several works of art that have survived to this day. This is due to the fact that the church was then fighting for its existence, enduring the cruel persecutions that were heaped upon it wave after wave. The little that was created by Christian artists at that time and that remained from that period was mainly found in the catacombs.
After Constantine legalized Christianity and moved his capital to Byzantium, which was later renamed Constantinople (the modern name is Istanbul, which is located in Turkey), the era of the Byzantine style began in art. In architecture, "the flowering of church architecture began almost instantly." Many of these great basilicas surpassed pre-Christian temples. In Greece, it was believed that the temple should contain a statue of the mortal god or goddess to whom this temple was dedicated. The Christian temple contained only the worship of the Beginningless God, Whom heaven and earth cannot contain. After Christianity was legalized, many great basilicas arose, but the most outstanding architectural masterpieces were built in our millennium. The Renaissance is called the golden age of arts, in which biblical themes were the main ones. Some historians give a superficial assessment of the Renaissance, so that it seems that all these innovators were neo-pagans. But this is not so. In fact, they "did a tremendous job of reconciling classical philosophy with Christianity, so that architects were already building churches, not pagan temples." It is worth looking at the great works of Michelangelo (1475-1564). His great works are statues of biblical characters, such as David, Moses, and even the "Pieta" - the crucified Christ in the arms of his grieving mother. A masterpiece is his frescoes on the ceiling and walls of the Sistine Chapel, which are also biblical in nature. Other great Renaissance artists, both Christian and non-Christian, painted Christian subjects. The great works of Raphael (1483-1520) were Christian, as was Michelangelo.
Jesus also had a positive influence on literature, enriching us with some of the greatest themes and ideas. From Dante to Chaucer, from John Donne to Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Christian faith has influenced literature, and literature has helped to spread the gospel. Author Joseph Nelson writes:
English literature owes much to Christianity. Many of the subjects and themes of our best literary works have their roots and inspiration in the Gospel of Christ... literature owes much to Christianity, for the spirit and doctrines of the gospel adorn the pages of all our literary works.
Christians also found inspiration in music. The music of the early church has its origins, style, and tradition in Jewish temple singing - in the psalms and in the songs of the Jewish synagogue. According to the Bible, music performs important functions. In 2 Chronicles 5:12-14 we see that music was an integral part of the ceremony of the dedication of Solomon's temple. We remember how King David also played the harp. Music was used as an accompaniment to the reading of selected passages from Scripture. In the Middle Ages, the reform of liturgy and singing was largely carried out by Gregory I (the Great, 590-604). He reformed liturgical singing, creating separate liturgies for different theological readings, provided for by the church calendar, and also wrote new melodies. The 11th-century monk Guido of Aretino (995-1050) made a very important contribution to the development of Western music. He is considered the father of modern musical notation. Wanting to help his students remember the notes c-d-ef-g-a, he took the first syllables of the words of the famous hymn Ut Queant Laxis, which is a Christian song about Saint John, thereby creating a mnemonic rule.
UT queant laxis REsonare fibris
MIre gestorum FAmuli tuorum
SOLve pollutis LAbiis reatum
Sancte Iohannes.
The first syllables of the words of these six lines became the names of the notes: "ut", "re", "mi", "fa", "sol", "la". We still learn them in this order, only replacing "ut" with "do" and adding "si" after "la". Guido of Aretna also developed a more accurate notation of the pitch of a note (position of a note), thereby abolishing the dependence of Western music on oral traditions. Music also carries its Christian essence in the Renaissance and Baroque periods (Luther, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and other authors and composers).