Christianity in the Western Tradition
“Christianity in the Western Tradition,” in Don Thompson, Darrel Colson, and J. Scott Lee, Universality and History: Foundations of Core(University Press of America, 2002) An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Core Texts and Courses in April 2000. The link is to a slightly expanded version of the published article. This paper examines the place of Christianity in the Western tradition. It is a dissent from the idea—found in a wide variety of mid-century works—of a great tradition of political and moral thought that begins in Athens and Jerusalem and is rejected by the founders of modernity. On this view, Ancient Greek and Biblical thought share the aspiration to ennoble human beings. Modernity, on the other, builds on low but presumably more solid foundations. In this paper I wish to put forward a different story. My claim is that, though modernity fundamentally rejects the… Continue reading