The Contribution of Roman Catholic Medical Missions to Health Care in the Developing World

The Roman Catholic Church has come in for a great deal of criticism recently for the apparent impact of its doctrines on the health of the peoples of the developing world. The Church’s prohibition on contraception and its doctrine of sexual abstinence except within marriage have been attacked by its secular opponents. They have accused the policy of allowing the spread of STDs and AIDS, and for contributing to these nations’ problems of overpopulation. In fact several non-Roman Catholic researchers have pointed out that the Church’s doctrines in these areas are not to blame for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Traditional African culture is strongly opposed to contraception, to the point where one joke states that they are the only things you can send through the post in West Africa that won’t be interfered with.

Irish Roman Catholic Opposition to President Reagan for his Support of Contras

It also needs to be pointed out that Roman Catholic charities are amongst the most active organisations working to combat disease and poverty in the Third World. Their members and supporters in the Developed World have criticised and denounced their leaders, when it has seemed that their policies have worked to harm and brutalise the very peoples for whom the charities work. When Ronald Reagan paid a state visit to Dublin in the 1980s, and went to speak at the University, many of the students at the great centre of learning boycotted the event, or led protests against him. The Irish were particularly involved with the Roman Catholic charities in the Third World, and particularly in South America. They were outraged at Reagan’s support for the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The Sandanista government was an undemocratic dictatorship, and its supporters also committed atrocities. However, most of the atrocities in that terrible conflict were committed by the Contras. They were responsible for massacres and mutilation on a truly horrific scale. Reagan’s administration not only supported the Contras, the president himself went as far as to call them the moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers. The result was widespread anger, and the boycott and protests by Irish Roman Catholics.

Two Examples of Roman Catholic Medical Missions: The Order of the Sisters of Mary and the Medical Mission Sisters

Some idea of the size of the Roman Catholic contribution to medical care in the Third World can be gained from the statistics for the Order of the Sisters of Mary in 1967. This order was founded in Drogheda in 1939. By 1967 the Order had sent 41 doctors, two dentists, 15 sister-tutors and 159 nurses to the Developing World. The Order had treated 946,647 patients. 131,647 of these were maternity patients. A further 13,909 people were treated for leprosy. Fourteen years later in 1981 the Medical Mission Sisters, otherwise knkown as Anna Dergel’s Foundation, based in Rome had 697 doctors working in the Third World. The Church and its charities have clearly made an immense contribution to medical care in teh Developing World, a fact deliberately overlooked by its fashionable secular opponents.

Ronald Ross: Christian Doctor who Discovered that Mosquitoes caused Malaria

One of the great medical discoveries has been that malaria is caused by mosquitoes, and specifically the microscopic parasite they carry. Before this discovery in the 19th century, it was believed that malaria was caused by bad air caused by rotting or filthy material. Hence the name of the disease, mala aria. The doctor who finally discovered that malaria was spread by mosquitoes was Ronald Ross, who was also a man of devout Christian faith. He went out as a young doctor in the Indian Army to find the parasite’s vector – the disease’s carrier – in the late 19th century. He worked, examining samples of mosquitoes for the parasite. Finally, on 2oth August 1897 he found the parasite in the stomach tissues of the anopheles mosquito. He had in fact nearly finished his research for the evening, and had frustrated by his apparent lack of success. His identification of the parasite in that mosquito made its identification as the disease’s vector certain. Ross was keenly aware how much this would improve the lives of millions of people in the future. He therefore wrote a series of verses praising the Lord for the discovery in a letter home to his wife.

Sadly, malaria is still responsible for millions of deaths throughout the world, and there are real concerns about the emergence of strains that are resistant to the current drugs. Nevertheless, it is doctors and researchers like Dr. Ross, whether they are Christians are not, who have saved many lives that would otherwise have been lost to the disease, and who are our best hope for combating it in the future.

The Sacrifice of Isaac: Francis Wheen Spouts Mumbo Jumbo

You may remember that way back in the last decade there was a spate of sceptical books attacking what their authors saw as pseudo-science. These included various New Age beliefs, and very often also Creationism and Intelligent Design. These books included Bad Science, by the Roman Catholic writer and science jounralist, Ben Goldacre, and How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, by Francis Wheen. Wheen’s a left-wing journalist, who has, I believe, written for the Guardian. He is a frequent guest on the News Quiz, a satirical panel show about the news on BBC’s Radio 4. In his introduction he stated that part of his purpose in writing the book was to defend the Enlightenment. These revivals of what he considered irrationalism threatened it. He confessed his admiration for the Enlightenment and its values, including its secularism.

Strange Days and Paranoia, Terrorism and Psychiatric Abuse of Dissidents in the 1970s

Now Wheen is an excellent writer. His book on the paranoia and chaos of the ’70s, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia, is very good. It begins with Nixon and Watergate, and expands to include the fear surrounding Mao and the Gang of Four. He traces the way Mao’s doctrine of guerilla warfare formed the template for that decades western urban terrorists, including the Provisional IRA in Britain, the Rote Armee Fraktion or the Baader-Meinhof Gang in Germany and the Maoist terrorists in France. These latter emerged following the failure of the 1968 uprising to topple French capitalism, and drew intellectual inspiration and support from radical academics. One of these latter appears to have done little except march around his university campus disrupting the classes of other lecturers he considered to be bourgeois and reactionary. He also discusses the murky events surrouding Harold Wilson’s prime ministership and the preparations to remove him in a coup by those who suspected him of being a KGB agent. One of the most fascinating, and relevant pieces in the book is his description of how Soviet psychiatry came up with a new mental illness that would justify the forcible incarceration of dissidents. This was done under the pretext that they must be insane to challenge the great, Soviet workers’ paradise. The Soviet political abuse of psychiatry strongly influenced the BBC SF series, Blake’s 7. In the series, the totalitarian Federation used mind control, including drugged food and water, and the conditioning, brainwashing and psychiatric brutalisation of dissidents to maintain its brutal and corrupt rule. This particular episode in Soviet history should be particularly alarming and provide a stark warning to people of faith concerning some of the pronouncements made by contemporary atheists. Some of the New Atheists, like the Rational Response Squad, made it clear they thought religion was a psychiatric disorder. Even now some professional neurologists have stated that they look forward to the day when neuroscience will be used to cure radical or dangerous religious beliefs. Blake’s 7′s fictional federation also closed churches. Science Fiction has been described as the literature of warning, and Blake’s 7 provided a fictional treatment of the Soviet psychiatric persecution of dissidents. The Soviet medicalisation of religion as a psychiatric disorder is one that some atheist scientists now seem to be following on their own. They’re either unaware of or unconcerned by their totalitarian predecessors.

Wheen’s Mumbo Jumbo and the Sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis

Much of Wheen’s book on ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ is unremarkable. It tackles some of the bizarre New Age beliefs. It shows his own left-wing views in criticising Thatcherism and her pursuit of the free market. Wheen is, however, an atheist. Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, to which Wheen has contributed, has joked about how Wheen called him an ‘irrational theist’. The book makes it clear that Wheen views religion as not just wrong, but dangerous. It shows the effect of 9/11 and the subsequent jihadi attacks on atheist opinions towards religion in general. Wheen does not consider them the action of just one religion, or even or a movement within that religion, but due to religion as a whole. He specifically blames the patriarch Abraham and the sacrifice of his son, Isaac, for causing suicide bombing. God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is, in Wheen’s view, a demand for the blind faith and for believers to give up their lives in the service of their God. It is the origin of the blind faith of the suicide bombers. He then rants about how Abraham was a barbarian who should be excluded from the tables of civilised people.

This is profoundly wrong. Wheen misses the point about the sacrifice of Isaac completely. His Comments do, however, say volumes about received atheist opinion towards religion. Mostly, this is that many prominent atheists actually aren’t concerned about the basic facts behind religious events and phenomena before they utter their opinions.

Abraham and God’s Mercy: God Unlike Pagan Gods, Does Not Demand Human Sacrifice

For Jews, Abraham is not a symbol of fanaticism and blind faith, but mercy. This is shown by his conversation with the Almighty concerning the number of good people, who would have to be in Sodom before the Lord destroyed the city. This goes down to about ten, showing that even if only a minuscule number of righteous people are present in a place so steeped in evil that the outcry against it goes up to the Lord Himself, God will withhold His anger from it. As for the sacrifice of Isaac, that has to be seen in the context of the pagan religious practices of the Ancient Near East. Human sacrifice was an accepted part of the ancient Near Eastern religions. It’s found in the law codes of the Hittites. In ancient Phoenicia, Canaan and Carthage infant children were burned alive as sacrifices to the pgan gods. The tophets, the sacrificial altars on which these poor mites were killed, have been found in the remains of Carthage itself. The remains of these sacrifices have also been found in ancient Canaan. The point the story of God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac makes is that the Lord does not want people to sacrifice humans to Him. Yes, He rewards the faith that makes people wish to fulfill His commands, even to death, but does not want them to make that sacrifice. Abraham does indeed make the pyre and prepare to sacrifice his son, but this is halted by God sending a ram, caught in a thicket, for the patriarch to sacrifice instead. The whole point of the story is against suicide bombing.

Wheen Ignorant of Scholarship on Ancient Paganism and the Meaning of Isaac’s Sacrifice

Few people are experts in Ancient Near Eastern culture. But you don’t have to be. I remember studying the sacrifice of Isaac in RE (Religious Education) at my old Church of England School. Wheen went to one of the British public schools, which in this case, for transatlantic readers, means that he went to an elite private school. Despite having a very expensive education, he clearly either didn’t study this part of the Bible in RE, or simply wasn’t paying attention when they did. Even if they didn’t study that part of the Bible, Wheen could still have tried to understand it simply by consulting a commentary. There are a number of good commentaries on scripture, some of which are available online. But Wheen didn’t. He simply assumed that the apparent message he read into the text was the correct one. His failure to consult a commentary or what Christians and Jews actually historically believe and say about this event also shows a completely dismissive attitude towards their beliefs. He appears to beleive that traditional Jewish and Christian views of scripture are of so little importance, so automatically wrong, that an atheist should not even remotely consider studying them before making their pronouncements.

The Marxist Origin of Suicide Bombing

As for suicide bombing, although this is now a favourite weapon of militant Islam, it was first used by the Tamil Tigers. As Marxists, they were atheists, who clearly wre not following a divine command, still less of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus Christ. But this is not mentioned by Wheen. Possibly he didn’t know about it. It does, however, show the deep antipathy of part of the atheist Left towards Judeo-Christian religion. There’s also an element of the secularist belief that all religions are somehow the same. If that is true, then therefore all religions must be equally violent. Thus Wheen sought to find the ultimate origin of the contemporary jihadist attacks not in today’s politics, or the violent theology and ideology of the terrorists themselves, but further back in Abraham’s lifetime, so he could blame and disparage all of the three Abrahamic faiths. Wheen’s other book are well worth reading, and much of his book on Mumbo Jumbo is too. Rather than being a product of reasoned thought and careful consideration, Wheen’s views on the sacrifice of Isaac in the Old Testament are merely the product of atheist ignorance and anti-religious bigotry.

The Descent of Man and the Ascent of Faith: Darwinism as Aid to 19th century Apologetics

One of the great myths of the history of science is that Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection was strongly opposed by the Christian church. There was indeed much opposition, but what is often neglected is that much of this was on scientific, rather than theological grounds. There were also a number of theologians who positively welcomed Darwinian evolution as an aid to faith.

Darwin’s Theory Not Proven Scientifically at Time of Proposal; Support of Theory by Some Clergy

At the time Darwin’s theory was still highly speculative, a fact that Darwin himself acknowledged. He was confident, however, that further facts and fossil evidence would be found to support his theory. Alister McGrath, the theologian and microbiologist, notes in his book, The Twilight of Atheism, that Bishop Samuel Wilberforce opened his legendary debate with Huxley with the statement that if Darwin’s theory of evolution were true, Christians would have to accept it, no matter how uncomfortable they found it. Furthermmore, while Huxley 31 years later remembered the debate as a great triumph, others were certainly not so sure. Sir Joseph Hooker believed that Huxley had turned the tables on the Bishop. He had failed, however, to deal with the weak points in Wilberforce’s arguments and had not convinced the rest of the people there. Indeed, Wilberforce actually convinced some of the scientists that evolution was actually wrong. One of these was Henry Baker Tristram, who was an early convert to Darwin’s theory. He had applied Darwin’s theory to the development of larks and chats in the Sahara desert. Witnessing the debate, he came to reject the theory. In 1867 the Guardian newspaper attacked the view, first proposed by F.W. Farrar, that the clergy as a whole were enemies of science. Its review of Darwin’s Descent of Man was critical. The reviewer nevertheless stated that viewed man as part of the evolutionary process, and considered that evolution would soon be as uncritically accepted as gravity. It stated that there was no ‘reason why a man may not be an evolutionist and yet a Christian. That is all that we desire to establish’. It then went on to state that ‘Evolution is not yet proved, and never may be. But … there is no occasion for being frightened out of our wits for fear it should be.’In 1874 T.G. Bonney’s book, A Manual of Geology, which argued for the vast age of the Earth, was published by the religious publishing house, the S.P.C.K. ON Darwin’s death in 1882, Huxley considered requesting that he be buried in Westminster Abbey. To his surprise, not only was his request not refused, but Canon F.W. Farrar declared to him that ‘we clergy are not all as bigoted as you suppose’ and asked him to make a formal application. Despite some opposition, Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey with full Christian rites. The following Sunday he was the subject of an appreciative sermon by Harvey Goodwin, the bishop of Carlisle. A memorial fund was set up for him that included not only the scientists Galton, Hooker, Romanes, Tyndall ahnd Herbert Spencer, but also the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. Near the end of the century Asa Grey told the Bishop of Rochester that looking back on the controversy, ‘he could not say that there had been any undue or improper delay on the part of the Christian mind and conscience in accepting, in such sense as he deemed they ought to be accepted, Mr. Darwin’s doctrine’s’. This contrasts strongly with the attitude of some Anglican clergy a few years ago, who issued an apology for the Anglican Church’s ‘misunderstanding’ of Darwin’s theory. Clearly, many of those at the time did not believe it had been misunderstood, or that the opposition had been excessive.

Use of Darwin in Christian Apologetics: Drummond

Some churchmen even viewed Darwin’s theory as an aid to Christian evangelism and apologetics. One of these was Henry Drummond, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland and professor of Natural Science at the Church’s College in Glasgow. In 1871 he hailed Natural Selection as ‘a real and beautiful acquisition to natural theology’, and declared that the Origin of Species was ‘perhaps the most important contribution to the literature of apologetics’ to appear in the 19th century. Taking the laws of nature as his inspiration and model, in 1883 he published Natural Law in the Spiritual World. Drummond used examples from the natural world to illustrate the same processes that he believed were present in the world of the spirit. This confusion between natural and spiritual was condemned by his those readers with philosophical inclinations. Nevertheless, it was also highly successful. This success was partly due to the use of illustrations from Darwin and Spencer, and scientific terminology and concepts such as biogenesis. In the view of Drummond’s biographer, G.A. Smith, his readers were not so much concerned whether he made a convincing case, but simply by the fact that he expressed and reinforced their deep religious convictions using the then dominant intellectual methods.

Darwin’s Theory and God’s Immanence in Creative Process

And Drummon was not the only clergyman who believed that Darwin actually aided faith. Some Christians, such as Charles Kingley, believed that the model of a mechanistic universe in which God only occasionally acted to introduce novelty served to separate the Almight from His creation. It stressed God’s transcendance at the expense of His immanence. For Kingsley and other like him, the doctrine of God’s Fatherhood and His Incarnation also meant that God was actively and creatively involved within His creation as well. In his contribution to the volume of theological essay, Lux Mundi, in 1881, the British theologian Aubrey Moore, used Darwin’s theory to attack the Deist notion of a God, who was not involved with His creation:

‘The one absolutely impossible conception of God, in the present day, is that which represents Him as an occasional visitor. Science has pushed the Deist’s God further and further away, and ata the moment when it seemed as if He would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend.’
For Moore, there was a simple choice. Either God was present everywhere, or he was nowhere.

Carpenter: Theistic Evolution without Natural Selection

Some of the believers in theistic evolution held something very similar to modern Intelligent Design. Asa Grey himself suggested to Darwin that, as no-one knew the true source of variation, it was wise to believe that the Lord was involved. William Carpenter, a British physiologist, believed he had found proof of this view in his study of the marine shellfish Foraminifera. In his hypothetical family tree, Carpenter demonstrated how a simple spiral shell had become circular through a regular progression. This had occurred following a definite evolutionary course in which each stage was in preparation for the next. He also pointed to the fact that all the members of the series still existed to demonstrate that their evolution could not be explained by Natural Selection. If the various members of the Foraminifera family still existed, then clearly they could not have been produced through a struggle for fitness, as this would have resulted in at least some of the species becoming extinct.

Emergence of Man too Accidental for Random Chance
James McCosh, a professor at Princeton University, wrote extensively attempting to reconcile evolution with Christian belief. One of his arguments that evolution actually pointed to a belief in the Lord came from the evolution of humanity itself. If humanity’s evolution was entirely due to chance, then our existence was an even more remarkable accident than even the atheists believed. On the other hand, it could also show that all these evolutionary accidents through which humanity was formed were hardly accidental. Indeed, humanity had evolved through ‘adjustment upon adjustment of all the elements and the all the powers of nature towards the accomplishment of an evidently contemplated end.’

Wallace: Evolution Argues against Intelligent Life in the Universe

Alfred Russell Wallace was also deeply impressed with the apparently chance emergence of humanity. In his 1903 book, Man’s Place in the Universe, he used it to attack those physicists and scientists searching for earth-like planets on which intelligent life may have evolved. In a similar argument to Stephen Jay Gould’s on the uhniqueness of terrestrial evolutionary history, Wallace suggested that no matter how similar the environment on another planet may be to the Earth’s, it’s own evolutionary history would be very different. Minor differences in the evolutionary history of that planet’s creatures would mean that they would definitely not be like those on Earth, making intelligent life extremely unlikely.

C.S. Peirce: Evolution Proves Existence of Personal God

For the American philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce, the element of chance in natural selection also pointed to the involvement of a personal God. The manufacture of pre-determined features was a purely mechanical process, which excluded development or growth. If the universe was not the result of pre-determined sequence of events, but he creation of a living personality, then it should show spontaneity, diversification and the potential for growth.

Temple: Evolution Proves God the Only Lord

Frederick Temple also argued that Darwinian evolution also demonstrated the existence of a single, creator God. Temple believed that the doctrine of separate creation was vulnerable to HUme’s argument that the universe’s design showed that it could also have been created by a number of separate deities. If Darwinian evolution was interpreted as a single process in which potential was realised in higher organic forms, it pointed to a single Designer.

Thus not only was the reception of Darwin’s theory of evolution more balanced than simple outright opposition, the theory was also used by some clergy to argue for and strengthen their faith. In his book, Darwinism and the Divine, Alister McGrath demonstrates that, in contrast to the received view that Darwinism ended natural theology, such speculation continued after the theory’s adoption. The theological arguments had been changed under the theory’s impact, as Huxley himself recognised and argued, but nevertheless, they continued.

The Advancement of Learning: Science in the Middle Ages

The title of this piece is taken from one of the great works of Sir Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan scholar who introduced the modern scientific method of experiment and induction. Bacon was advocating and looking forward to a new era of scientific progress in contrast to the Aristotelian system of the Middle Ages. This system was increasingly criticised and rejected by European philosophers and scientists during the 17th century in the period of the Scientific Revolution. This saw the creation of the modern scientific method, ‘the mechanical philosophy’, by scholars such as Bacon, Descartes and Galileo. The Middle Ages have a popular reputation as an age of religious faith where intellectual inquiry and particularly science were rigidly controlled and kept within strict limits by the Roman Catholic church, with much philosophical speculation and scientific research prohibited and suppressed. Many popular treatments of the history of science duly give detailed descriptions of the theories and inventions of the ancient world. These then often pass quickly to the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, devoting only a few pages, if at all, to medieval science. These generally note that much ancient science was lost with the Fall of the Roman Empire, and what science was taught during the Middle Ages was Aristotelian.

It is of course true that scholarship and intellectual research was in the hands of the church, which would attempt to ban any religious, philosophical and scientific doctrines it considered a threat. Nevertheless, the idea that the Church was opposed to all intellectual inquiry is untrue. It is the creation of a number of hostile writers and movements from the early modern period up to the 19th century. These included the 16th century Humanists, who criticised the Middle Ages for its poor classical scholarship, to Enlightenment philosophers and historians such as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon. It was the Humanist Petrarch, who first used the term medius tempus with the sense of a dark age lasting from the Fall of the Roman Empire to his own time. They attacked the Middle Ages for its religious intolerance and supposed ignorance and believed that proper scientific knowledge and endeavour had only begun with the Scientific Revolution of the preceding century. More recently historians have increasingly viewed the Middle Ages as a period of scientific and technological advance comparable to that of the 19th century. One of the first scholars who led the positive reappraisal of medieval science was Pierre Duhem, the French Roman Catholic physicist and philosopher of science. Duhem’s aim was partly to attack the views of the French Positivists, who accepted the view of Auguste Comte that society moved from a stage of magic, through theology to a final age of science. Other scholars since Duhem have followed him in viewing the Middle Ages positively as an age of philosophical innovation and scientific achievement. Medieval science has also benefited from the positive appreciation of medieval philosophy generally by historians. The French historian Jean Gimpel subtitled his book, The Medieval Machine ‘The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages’. While this is an extreme view, nevertheless the Middle Ages did see considerable scientific and technological research and progress.

It is impossible to present a detailed description of the medieval scientific worldview and its physics, biology and cosmology in a short talk. I will instead try to present an overview of the progress of medieval scientific and technical knowledge. Although much medieval science, such as the theory of the four humours and Earth-centred ptolemaic view of the universe was wrong, nevertheless it was an age when many European scholars took an active interest in questions of natural philosophy. Natural science in its turn inspired and was celebrated by writers and poets such as Jean de Meun and the anonymous author of the 15th century English work, The Court of Sapience. In addition to describing some of the advances and developments made in science during the Middle Ages, this paper will also discuss the theological and metaphysical views, that allowed the acceptance of natural philosophy in the monastic schools and universities and encouraged its further development.

Much ancient knowledge was lost during the chaos of the barbarian invasions. Even before the Roman Empire fell, Pliny complained that there was less scientific research under the Empire than when its constituent countries were separate, independent states. The Romans themselves largely left science and literature to the Greeks, the main intellectual centres of the Roman world were further east, in Alexandria, for example. Many of these areas were thus lost when the Middle Eastern and north African provinces were conquered by Islam. During the Middle Ages manuscripts were preserved and copied in monastic libraries and then in the new universities.

Medieval scientific works following the fall of the Roman Empire consisted of:

Natural History of Pliny
Boethius’ works on geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music, and translations of Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. However, Geometry of Boethius only dates from 9th century.
Etymologies of Isidore of Seville
Cassiodorus in Institutio Divinarum Litterarum, urged study of herbal medicine.
Dioscorides’ Materia Medica
Lucretius, fragments of De Rerum Natura
Plato’s Timaeus, trans. Chalcidius 4th century, 5th century commentary by Martianus Capella..
Physiologus – ancestor of medieval bestiaries. Written in Alexandria and translated into Latin in 5th century.
Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales
Macrobius, In Somnium Scipionis
Vitruvius De Architectura.

The Seven Liberal Arts in the monastic schools: 1st stage consisted of two stages, the Trivium and Quadrivium. The Trivium, consisted of grammar, logic and rhetoric. From this, students passed to the 2nd stage of the Quadrivium. This was composed of the more scientific subjects of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. Music was considered a science because of its basis in mathematical harmony. The texts used for scientific study were Pliny, Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidore.

Despite the very limited number of scientific texts surviving from ancient Rome, the early Middle Ages did see the composition of new scientific works. In Anglo-Saxon England,astronomy and medicine were taught in 7th century Kent. The great Anglo-Saxon historian, the Venerable Bede, wrote a book on natural philosophy, De Rerum Natura, based on Isidore’s book of same name, and Pliny. He also wrote several other scientific works, including De Temporibus and De Temporum Ratione. These dealswith time, and the calendar, date of Easter and the nature of the tides. There was also a medical manual, Bald’s Leechbook, and a work on herbal medicine, the Herbarius, attributed to Apulaius Barbarus or Platonicus. The 10th century also saw a textbook on arithmetic composed by Helperic.

In addition to translations of Arabic and Greek texts, the 12th Century was also a period in which original scientific works were produced. These included the Quaestiones Naturales of Adelard of Bath and Thierry of Chartres, De Septem Diebus et Sex Operum Distinctionibus. Adelard’s books was a question and answer lesson on the nature of universe between Adelard and his nephew.
The De Septem Diebus et Sex Operum Distinctionibus was a rational explanation of Creation.

12th Century Onwards: Period of Translation of Arabic Texts

Medieval Islam had preserved and expanded on the ancient knowledge that had been lost in the West. As a result scholars were active translating their works into Latin from the 12th century onwards. Toledo was an important centre of the new Arab science in the west, and scholars such as Daniel de Morley travelled there to enjoy the new learning. The authors translated into Latin included works on chemistry, arithmetic, physics, geology, alchemy, anatomy, optics, medicine, astronomy, botany, meteorology and mathematics by al-Battani, al-Fargani, Jabir ibn Hayyan, Al-Khwarizmi, Alkindi, Thabit ibn Qurra, Rhazes, Alfarabi, Haly Abbas, Pseudo-Aristotle, Alhazen, Avicenna, Hippocrates, Aristotle, Aristotle, Euclid, Apollonius’ Conica, Alhazen’s, Archimedes, Diocles, Nicholas of Damascus, Pseudo-Euclid, Galen, Ptolemy, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Alpetragius, Averroes, Hero of Alexandria, Proclus, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Simplicius, Galen. It was also the period when Arabic numerals began to be introduced to the west. The first description of them is the Liber Abaci of Leonardo Fibonacci. In astronomy, the tables of al-Zarqali, known as Toledan Tables or Canones Azarchelis, were used before these were replaced in the 13th century by Alfonsine Tables, compiled under Alfonso the Wise.

This interest in natural philosophy was encouraged by the views of some of the early Church Fathers. St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen believed that all knowledge was good, as it led to the perfection of mind. They believed that the study of philosophy and natural science was not incompatible with Christianity. St. Clement compared the fear of pagan philosophy with a child’s fear of goblins. St. Augustine believed that before the fall Adam and Eve had practised all the lawful arts and sciences, and so recommended the study of nature and the sciences as a way of returning to the state of primeval innocence. He was followed in the Middle Ages by Hugh of St. Victor. In a universal history Hugh traced the restoration of God’s image in humanity through the development of arts and sciences.

The 12th century also saw the formulation of the conception of a lawful cosmos, based on ancient Stoic and Christian concepts of the Logos innate in and ordering the universe. St. Augustine in the De Genesi ad Litteram IX. 17, stated ‘The most customary course of all this nature has certain natural laws of its own according to which both the spirit of life, which is in a creature, has in some way certain settled desires of its, which even malevolence cannot overcome, and the elements of this corporeal world have their settled power and quality, what any one of them may or may not effect and what may or may not come from what’. Herman of Carinthia in the 12th century referred to a ‘law of a certain universal condition’ was involved in the definition of nature and the nature of things:

‘All movements of secondary generation are administered by a certain relationship of nature (by the decision, of course, of the Author of all things, and since every order of things which are living is perpetuated by a law of a certain universal condition which in common speech is called “nature”, from nature itself it seems most appropriate to begin … It is customary for the term “nature” to be used for two concepts … [I] [as] Seneca … says “What is nature other than God and divine reason inserted into the whole universe and its parts” … [ii] But the other is that by which Plato composes the soul of the universe … By taking up this “mature” natural scientists can attempt to describe individually the natures of all bodies – both of the heavens and of the lower world … ‘

There was conflict between the Latin Averroeists, who derived their doctrines from Aristotle, and Christianity on major theological issues of the nature of God, humanity and free will. Averroeism denied free will, and stated that God could not create a different universe to this one. They also argued that there was no individual soul, only single active intellect common to everyone. Some Averroeists, such as Jean de Jandun and Siger of Brabant, rejected Christian theology.
Prohibitions against teaching Aristotle were issued in Paris in 1210 and 1215. However, these did not forbid them from being privately studied, and lectures on Aristotle were still announced in the university of Toulouse. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed a commission to revise some of Aristotle’s natural philosophy. By 1255 examinations on Aristotle had been established at the university of Paris. By the end of the century Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, had completed their expositions on Aristotle, and their attempts to reconcile it with Christianity.

Albertus and Aquinas rejected Aristotle when it conflicted with Christian theology. However, they also recognised that religion and philosophy frequently discuss the same subjects from different viewpoints, and so separated theology from science. In Chapter 4 of the Summa Contra Gentiles St. Thomas Aquinas argued ‘That the Philosopher and the theologian consider creatures in different ways’. Aquinas also argued in the Summa Contra Gentiles ‘That the consideration of creatures is useful for instruction of faith’ (chapter 2); and ‘That knowledge of the nature of creatures serves to destroy errors concerning God’ (chapter 3). Despite this, in 1277 219 Aristotelian and Averroeist doctrines were condemned by Etienne Tempier, bishop of Paris.This clearly was an attempt to limit philosophers’ freedom to think and speculate. Pierre Duhem considered that the condemnation of 1277 had a positive effect by forcing natural philosophers to consider non-Aristotelian explanations based on the notion that God could do anything He wished, so long as it did not involve a logical contradiction. For Duhem, the condemnation of 1277 was a positive advance which led to the birth of modern science.

The 13th and 14th centuries also marked the point at which mathematics was introduced into science through the work of Grosseteste and other philosophers.. The use of sophismata – argumentation – created a methodological unity between philosophy and theology. There was no sharp distinction in the later Middle Ages between theology and Natural Philosophy as theologians had developed natural theology, which, like natural philosophy, depended on experience. There was also no strict separation of science and magic, as both the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist systems suggested how magic could work through astral influences from stellar rays and the correspondences between the microcosm of humanity and the macrocosm of the world, and the occult properties of plants and minerals. Thus the fashioning of amulets, for example, and certain forms of astrology could be considered scientific. While magic, miracles and the actions of demons and angels were accepted in the Middle Ages, there was also considerable scepticism about how far the actions of demons and witches were possible. By the 13th century some philosophers were able to keep magic largely out of their scientific works, such as Albertus Magnus, Petrus Peregrinus and Rufinus. Thus William of Auvergne attributed some experiences of demonic possession not to demons themselves, but to the sufferer having eaten too much and the weight of the food in their stomach blocking the correct operation of their nerves, so giving rise to terrifying hallucinations.

The establishment of the new Aristotelian science at Oxford, as well as the study of mathematics, logic, languages and Biblical scholarship was due to Robert Grosseteste in his capacity as Magister Scholarum or University Chancellor. The medieval universities were not universities in the modern sense of research institutions, but rather vocational schools designed to prepare their students for a career in the church or in the bureaucracy of government.

Medieval philosophers were particulary interested in optics as St. Augustine and the Neoplatonists had viewed them as symbols of divine grace, It was also a subject that could be investigated mathematically. Robert Grosseteste was the first important medieval philosopher interested in optics, as he believed that light had been the first corporeal form, and was responsible for dimensions and space itself, and was the first principle of motion and efficient causation. As part of this interest, Grosseteste and other scientists investigated the rainbow, which they knew was produced through refraction. Spectacles were invented later in the 13th century, c. 1286, and were popularised by the Dominica Friar, Alessandro della Spina. Jean de Meun refers to this research into optics in the Roman de la Rose:

‘One may learn the cause
Why mirrors, through some subtle laws,
Have power to objects seen therein -
Atoms minute or letter thin -
To give appearance of fair size
Though naked unassisted eyes
Can scarce perceive them. Grains of sand
Seem stone when through these glasses scanned…
But to these matters blind affiance
No man need give: they’re proved by science…’

Other medieval natural philosophers researched and discussed problems in a range of sciences including astronomy, meteorology, mechanics, geology, chemistry, and biology and agriculture. The lodestone was first described in the west in the De Naturis Rerum of Alexander Neckham, while the first description of the compass is the Epistola de Magnete of Petrus Peregrinus of Maricourt in 1269. Jean Buridan and Nicholas Oresme before Copernicus suggested that it was the Earth that revolved, not the sun. Richard of Wallingford built an astronomical clock in 1320, while in Italy the clockmaker Giovanni de’ Doni built planetaria showing the movements of the stars. Jordanus Nemorarius, who may have been the second Master-General of the Dominican Order, Jordanus Saxo, analysed rates of motion. In Geology, Albertus Magnus argued that the Earth had originally been covered entirely in water. Dry land had been created through underwater volcanoes that pushed land above sea level. Those creatures that had been trapped in the mud became fossils. Jean Buridan and Albertus Parvus, by contrast, believed that dry land had been exposed through gradual changes in the Earth’s centre of gravity. The waters had receded as the Earth’s centre of gravity changed. Medieval chemistry remained largely based on that of the ancients and Arabs. Distilling was introduced to the west during the 12th and 13th centuries. The 12th century Mappa Clavicula is the first western account of the preparation of alcohol. By the end of the 13th century alcohol was used to produce drugs and perfumes, and by the 15th century the distillers had formed their own guild.

Albertus Magnus discussed plant morphology and biology in his De Plantis. Influenced by the ancient writer, Theophrastus, Albertus believed that new species could arise from previous varieties. He demonstrated this with examples from the domestication of wild plants, and domestic varieties that had run wild. In the 14th century his speculation was continued by Henry Hesse, who discussed the emergence of new diseases and the new drugs that would be needed to treat them. From the 12th century onwards human anatomy was seen as vital to medicine. Beginning with Salerno in the 12th century, a number of universities included the dissection of human and animals as part of the medical courses. Other inventions in medicine included improved forms of bandaging and the use of pulleys and weights to extend fractured limbs. Anaesthetics for surgery were also known. The Antidotarum Nicolai, written some time before 1150, recommended spongia soporifera. This was a mild anaesthetic composed of opium, mandragora and henbane soaked in water. John Mirfeld described the use of the tornellus for certain dislocations. In 15th century Italy the Brancas developed a form of reconstructive surgery to restore noses, lips and ears. Some medieval doctors had also been aware of the need to keep wounds clean. Medieval doctors used unguents on wounds to generate pus, which they associated with the healing process. This was rejected by Hugh and Theodoric Borgognoni and Henry of Mondeville. They instead recommended that wounds should be cleaned with wine, then stitched and left to heal naturally. Unfortunately the great French surgeon, Guy de Chauliac rejected their methods and under his influence doctors and surgeons returned to encouraging wounds to suppurate. A more positive development was the use of trepanation to drain fluid from the heads of hydrocephalic children. This process was described at the end of the 13th century by William of Saliceto. One of the earliest medieval surgical manuals was the Chirugia of Roger of Salerno, assembled from his students’ lecture notes c. 1180. This was translated into Anglo-Norman in the mid-13th century. The ancient Roman author, Soranus, was used by mid-wives. In the 14th century a manual of obstetrics was published, The Knowing of Women in Chylding, or the Science of Women in Childbirth.

Guy de Chauliac also described a number of dental techniques, such as the use of a powder from the bones of cuttlefish for cleaning teeth. He also described how piece of ox bone or human teeth could be fastened to the remaining teeth to replace those the patient had lost. Later in the Middle Ages other physicians described the use of a drill to remove the decayed parts of a tooth. Gold foil was then used for fillings.

The Middle Ages also saw the introduction of a number of important technological inventions. Agricultural productivity was raised by the introduction of the modern horse collar and the heavier medieval plough. Agricultural land was reclaimed from the sea using pumps, sluices and dykes. Lock gates were introduced to canals in the 14th century, and roads improved by the construction of surface of stone cubes on a bed of loose earth or sand. In the 15th century Konrad Kyeser and Jacopo Mariano Taccola drew ships with paddle wheels.

Printing appeared in Europe before Gutenberg perfected the use of metal type in the 15th century. Presses were developed for wine and to print cloth. The monastery of Engelberg used woodcuts to print the initial letter in its manuscripts in 1147. Block printing appeared in Ravenna in 1289, and became common throughout Europe by the 15th century. Movable metal type first appeared in Limoges in 1381. By 1417 its use had spread to Antwerp and then to Avignon in 1444.

Watermills were known in the ancient world and China, although their use in the Roman Empire was actually very limited. By the 5th century they were in general use across Europe, and there were a range of different types. During the Middle Ages they were adapted to mechanise the fulling, iron smelting and wood-processing industries. Triphammers had been added to watermills to full cloth, and crush woad and oak bark and tan leather by the end of the 12th century. The 14th century the mechanism was used to drive the bellows in forges. The treadle hammer was introduced to create the stamping mill for metal ore in the 15th century. By the 14th century there were sawmills driven by waterwheels. By the 15th century this mechanism was used to power iron-rolling and wire-drawing mills, pump mines and salt pits, and used on cranks and windlasses for hoists in mines. Indeed, in the Netherlands and Germany the use of such devices were so efficient for pumping mines that they were not overtaken by steam until the 19th century. Iron smelting was also improved through the used of a head of water to force air into the furnace under pressure in Italy and Spain before the 14th century. This, and the use of horse- and waterwheel-driven bellows created the first blast furnaces, which allowed the mass production of cast iron for the first time.

These Discoveries and innovations were also incorporated into general surveys of the sciences, and university courses. Hugh of St. Victor, in his Didascalion de Studio Legendi, including some practical subjects in the seven liberal arts. He divided the mechanical sciences into the manufacture of cloth and weapons, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine and the theatre. The Arts course at Paris university in the 13th century at the beginning of the 13th century included not only the seven liberal arts, but also the three philosophies of Natural Philosophy, ethics and metaphysics.

Apart from the Roman de la Rose, the sciences were also celebrated in the late 15th century poem, The Court of Sapience.In this story the narrator loses a game of chess with the World and Dame Fortune. Reason rebukes him for his stupidity, and he prays to God to find the way to Dame Sapience before falling asleep. In a dream he meets Dame Sapience and her companions Intelligence and Science, who takes him to her castle. This has seven towers, each occupied by the seven virtues, while Sapience, Intelligence and Science have separate courts. Also welcoming Sapience and the dreamer is Dame Philosophy. In the plan of the castle, the first courtyard is Science’s, and is where Scripture teaches. The second courtyard is the home of Intelligence with a parlour of theologians. Sapience’s own courtyard has a great hall, a chapel and parlours for each of the seven liberal arts. It is the most splendid of the courtyards.

The poem states

‘There was al natural philosophye
And in a goodly parlour see I syt
The philosopher with his companye
Tretyng of kynd, and what longeth to it;
There was clerk note, there was konnyng and wyt
They poynt, they wryte, they dyspute, they depure,
They determyne eche thyng that hath nature.

The philosophers include

‘Arystotyl, Averous, Avycenne,
Good Algazel, Galyene, Appollynus,
Pyctagoras, and Plato with his penne,
Macrobius, Cato, Boecius,
Rasus, Isake, Calyxte, Orbasius,
Salusius, Theophyl, Ypocras -
With many mo whoos names I lete pas.

These had delyte to serven Dame Scyence,
And to have knowledge in phylosophye;
They worshypped her, they dyd hir reverence,
They hole desyre was to her soveraynly;
They wake, they work, they study besyly,
Whiles that they ben with Dame Scyence expert;
Theym to byholde myght ravysshe every hert!’

C.P. Snow once referred to the ‘two cultures’ of the arts and sciences, and lamented how their members did not interact with their counterparts in the opposing group. This is a problem in contemporary culture, now being tackled by projects to link science and the arts. There have been plays like Copenhagen written about scientific concepts, in this case, quantum physics and its theory of indeterminacy. The ancients did not attempt to solve the problem of the two cultures. The first attempt to do so was in the Middle Ages, as this poem demonstrates. It failed, but shows the problem was taken seriously and there were attempts to tackle it.

Government Policy and the NHS: Remarks on Possible Privatisation

Okay, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything on this blog. Some of that is because I had other things that required my attention, and some of it was because I got sick and tired of arguing with some of the commenters. Now that I’ve sorted some of the other stuff out, hopefully I can get back to blogging.

This is going to be a purely secular post. In th epast I’ve avoided puttin gpolitics into the blog because I saw its purpose purely as defending Christianity. Jesus states in John’s Gospel that ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, and the question of salvation and belief in the Risen Christ should unite Christians of all political beliefs and none, as well as the Lord’s call to care for the poor. Those on the Left have traditionally believed that this is best done through collective action by institutions such as the state. Those on the political Right, by contrast, believe that this is best achieved through private charity and individual self-reliance. A survey made a few years ago noted that politically Conservative American Christians gave more to charity than secular Liberals. Of course, there are many people, including Christians, who support both approaches and are personally generous as well as supporting various state institutions that are intended to combat poverty, such as the British welfare state.

Most people in Britain support the NHS. It’s done a magnificent job of combating disease and preserving the nation’s health in Britain since its foundation in 1948. The Government reforms introduced today, including provision to open it up to greater private competition may threaten its continued existence and efficiency. Many see it as privatisation by the back door. I thought I’d therefore try and remind poeple what Britain was like before the NHS was set up. Some descriptions of the quality of medical care for the working class and a discussion of the issues involved in private health care is contained in the social work text book, Mastering Social Welfare, by Pat Young (Basingstoke: MacMillan 1989). Young nottes that prior to the NHS, there was some state provision of medical care. Services for pregnant woemn and children had been set up at the beginning of the 20th century. The Liberal goverment in 1911 introduced employment linked insurance to pay for the medical care of those in work. Under the Poor Law, local authorites also provided some infirmaries, hospitals and mental hospitals. Despite this, there was great variation in the quality of the care provided, and consirable social stigma attached to such state care. She illustrates this with the following quotations, taken from people in Sheffield:

‘(In) Attercliffe in Sheffield’s East End which housed the heavy industry of the Don Valley and the workforce which operated it – bronchitis was a way of life. People expected to live with it, suffer from it and eventually die from it, with only their weekly bottle of medicine for relief’. (p. 257).

Young also includes the memories of two women, who recalled struggling to pay the bills:

‘Bills from general practitioners were always hard to meet … Kay remembered especially a doctor in the Crookesmore district of Sheffield who employed a debt collector … the effects were particularly severe for working class women, who due to a policy of not employing married women in Sheffield always tended to fall outside the insurance scheme. ‘Mother never had the doctor’. ‘You just didn’t go to the doctor until you were on your last legs’. Kay recallede how her own mother hadn’t gone to the doctor even though she was in bed with asthma. And Jessie likewise how her mother continued to suffer with high blood pressure, even though she knew that tablets were available which could have helped to lessen her condition’ (p. 257).

Young also includes the memories of a GP, Dr. Arnold Elliot, who practised before the NHS was set up.

‘I ran my practice from a small house in Ilford, but most surgeries were lock-up shops in industrial areas. On the whole, most of them were awful, with no running water, heat, lighting or toilets, some with no couches.

I knew one East End doctor who had a cigarette machine in his waiting room. Many doctors had two doors, one for ‘panel’ patients (the insured workers) and one for private patients, who weren’t kept waiting.

Doctors didn’t speak to each other, because they were deadly enemies. They went in for headhunting the bread-winning panel patient, who would often bring in the rest of his family.

Various private arrangements were set up for his dependants so-called ‘clubs’ – where they paid a small amount a week for a doctor and medicine. For the destitute, there were dispensaries, which engaged the service of a doctor for a small annual payment … Doctors used to dispense their own medicines too. The pharmaceutical firms came round and filled up the big ‘Winchester’ bottles every week. Many of the medicines were placebos; aspirin, for instance, which was available in a red or yellow mixture. You had to give the same colour to a patient every week, and sometimes there’d be trouble when you had a locum in and he gave out the wrong one. It sounds immoral, but that was trade.’ (p. 257-8).

YOung also includes the recollection of the qulaity of care by Sir George Godber, one of the founders of the NHS. He conducted a survey of the type of care available in 1942, and found it to be appallingly inadequate:

‘You must remember hospitals in those days were very different from today. An isolation hospital might only have five beds. Tehre was a hospital for scarlet fever in the Prime Minister’s (Margaret Thatcher) home town of Grantham that was housed in a wooden hut on the top of a hill without sewers or water – the water was delivered by cart once a week. The system in 1942 was incapable of delivering modern medicine. There were dilapidated buildings, insanitary conditions on the wards, inadequate space for radiology and laboratory services.

There were casual wards where tramps stayed overnight and even more depressing house wards where elderly residential patients waited to die in the most uncivilised conditions – the nights spent in narrow and dark dormitories of 20 to 30 beds and the daytime sitting on hard benches in a different room looking at their feet’. (p. 258). Some indication of the massive lack of hospital provision is given by the fact that the Hospital Building Plan of 1962 recommended that for every 100,000 to 200,000 people there should be a general hospital with 600 to 800 beds. A massive campaign of hospital construction shortly followed.

Although an initiative of the Labour party following the report of the Liberal Peer, Lord Beveridge, many Conservatives under Rab Butler also supported the creation the NHS. One of my mother’s friends was a staunch Conservative. Her ownly family was solidly Conservative and her husband was a Conservative local councillor. She recalled how her father had broken with family tradition to support the NHS’ foundation. He had been a pharmacist, and at a family meeting told them that very many of his customers were receiving their medicine on credit, because they simply could not afford to pay for it. He therefore stated that he was going to vote Labour on this occasion because the country needed the NHS.

Problems of Private Medical Care

Since Margaret Thatcher, the government has promoted increased private provision of medical care and the adoption of private medical insurance. There are severe problems with this policy, however. Firstly, as they are commercial organisations run for profit, they concentrate on low-risk subscribers to the exclusion of those who are high risk. They also tend not to provide a comprehensive service, but specialise on those illnesses, which only require a short stay in hospital and routine surgery. Pregnancy and childbirth are not covered, and cover is only limited to a sertain number of days in the year.

Another criticism is that under private health care, insurance companies shift the emphasis from the need for treatment to the ability to pay. By providing treatment to those who can pay, private insurance has reduced pressure on the government to solve the problem of waiting lists. One criticism of the existence of pay-beds in the NHS is that it encourages queue-jumping and again leads to concentration on those who can pay, rather than those who need it.

Private health care has also been subsidised by the state in a number of different ways. Private patients in NHS hospitals do not pay the full cost of the hospital’s maintenance, construction and staffing. Private medical staff have also been trained at the expense of the state. (This was in 1989, long before the introduction of tuition fees under New Labour and their increase under the present Conservative-Liberal coalition). The private sector also does not provide post-op0erative health, social services or home care. Private hospitals also generally do not have expensive equipment and use NHS facilities. Private medical insurance has also been subsidised by the state through the tax relief given to employers providing insurance for their staff.

It would also be impossible for all health care to be funded privately, with or without private insurance. America, for example, has a large publicly funded system – medicare and mecicaid – to treat the less prosperous and elderly. Furthermore, private health care also creates a two-tier system in which the better-off get better care. The greater provision of private medical services in Britain could produce a similar system over here.

There is also no evidence supporting the claim that hospitals are cheaper and more efficiently run privately. The lack of central control over hospitals in the US and the close relationship between the insurance companies and the medical profession has led to high charges and large profits for both of them. Private medical treatment in America involves long and costly administrative procedures. Young’s assessment of private medical care in America inicludes the quotation that in America ‘admittance to hospital for aminor disorder involves an orgy of form-filling and medical insurance checking which makes filling in a car accident claim look simple.’ (p. 268).

Young notes that the benefits from private insurance are argued to be a reduction in NHS expenditure and the taxation that supports it. Those who can pay have freedom of choice and the option of paying for extra services. She therefore concludes that ‘it would seem that there are advantages to some individuals in allowing a private sector to coexist iwth the NHS. However, the existence of such provision constitutes a serious threat to the future of the service set up to guarantee access to high-quality medical care regardless of ability to pay’. (p. 268).

Young wrote this in 1989, and since then much has changed. I do know a number of people who have benefited from private treatment. Much of her criticism appears still valid, and and in certain respects the situation has become worse. Twenty years ago when Bill Clinto was in power, one of the British broadsheets estimated that a tenth of American citizens could not afford medical insurance. A BBC report in February 2013 on BBC 1 noted that the figure was now 1 in 8. One of the major issues in American politics under George ‘Dubya’ Buch’s administration was the increasingly high cost of medical insurance.

A friend of mine also studied medicine at university. According to him, many American hospitals are already secretly kept afloat through state support. Under American law, hospitals have to provide emergency room services regardless of the patient’s ability to pay. As a result, some hospitals find it difficult to remain solvent and require payment from the local authorities to remain in business.

It’s because of these considerations that I consider the government’s proposed reforms to the NHS to be wrong and damaging, both to the institution they claim to wish to reform and the country as a whole, and I strongly believe that they should be opposed.

Christianity and the Origins of Democracy – the Sixteenth Century: Part 4

View of John Knox that Princes and the People themselves have a Right and Duty to Depose an Unjust Monarch Preventing the Establishment of True Religion

In his view of the relationship between the king and his subjects, Calvin allowed that unjust rulers could be deposed by the inferior magistrates, but stressed the subject’s duty to obey established authority, even when it was corrupt. John Knox, however, believed that the aristocracy and the estates also had their authority granted by God, and so had the right and duty to defend the innocent, punish criminals and establish proper religion. If the monarch refused to allow religion to be reformed, and the true faith to be established, then it was the duty of the aristocracy and the estates to depose them. If the aristocracy and estates refused to do this, then it was the duty of the people themselves to reform the church, a view he addressed directly to the people themselves in his Letter to the Commonalty. This view, that the people themselves had the right and duty to rebel against their social superiors when they were unjust and prevented the proper establishment of true religion, was immensely radical in an age when government and politics was viewed as the exclusive activity of princes and aristocrats, to whom the masses of ordinary people should be loyal and obey, but who were otherwise excluded from government and their political participation was viewed with suspicion and distrust.

View of Goodman that Kings Owed their Power to the People, and so can Depose Unjust Monarchs

Knox was not alone in his views, however. The English Calvinist, Christopher Goodman, stated in his book, How Superior Powers ought to be obeyed of their subjects; wherein they may lawfully by God’s word be disobeyed and resisted, published in Geneva in 1558 that kings owed their power and their authority to their acceptance as kings by their people, and that ordinarily they should be respected. Like Knox, he also believed that the aristocracy was ordained by God to defend their nation’s true religion, laws and prosperity and to act to limit and restrain the king’s power. Kings were also God’s subjects, and like everyone else they were obliged to work to the best of their ability in their vocation. If they abused their position, they could be deposed and punished. This was not just the duty of the aristocracy, but also of ordinary people, who are required to reform the church if the king and aristocracy refuse to do so.

View of Ponet that God Established Government for Human Welfare, but Form of the Government Left to Humanity to Decide

Another Protestant exile from the reign of Mary Tudor in England, John Ponet, also believed in and expounded the right of the subjects themselves to overthrow an oppressive monarch. Ponet had been bishop of Rochester and Winchester during the Reign of Edward VI before he sought refuge in Strasbourg after Mary’s accession, publishing his treatise on government, A Shorte Treatise of Politicke Power in 1556. Unlike Mariana and Buchanan, for example, who believed that government arose out of humanity’s natural inclination for company and co-operation, or the need for protection from aggression when in the primeval phase of human existence, Ponet believed that humanity was too corrupt to govern itself through reason. He attributed the belief that it was possible to the ancient pagans, and considered that history demonstrated that they had been wrong. Ponet believed that human actions should be guided by divine law, which is the law of nature. However, humans did not obey law unless coerced, and so God had created political power for humanity’s benefit, granting humanity the power to legislate for itself and enforce such legislation with appropriate punishment, including execution. God did not, however, specify which form of government humans were to adopt. That was left to humanity itself. God did not grant authority to only one individual, but to the community, as a co-operative association based on the reciprocal need of each individual for every other. It was the community that maintained justice and general welfare.

View that Best Form of Government Mixed Government of Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy, and that Power of Monarch Limited by Constitution and God’s Law

Ponet did not believe that any people could sensibly give unlimited power to a prince, and so considered the best form of government to be a mixed constitution where sovereignty was shared between the prince and a parliamentary assembly. England, France and Germany were all ruled by this form of government. Even those monarchs who ruled without a parliamentary assembly were subject to constitutional limits to their authority. They were bound by God’s law, and so could only legislate on relatively unimportant matters. Furthermore, Ponet urged that people should not automatically accept legislation that was merely human in origin. Laws must be considered and obeyed on their own merits, and not because of the authority of the people who had passed them. While people owed kings their love and loyalty, their first loyalty was to God, then their country and only afterwards to the monarch. He regarded princes as merely members of the commonwealth, which could exist without them. He stated that princes were liable unjustly to seize their subject’s property as their own, alter the coinage and raise taxes, political conduct that Ponet declared to be mere brigandage. They did not hold of themselves their kingdom, but simply had it in stewardship. Under the law of nature, people had the right to depose and execute oppressive rulers and tyrants, and so the community had the ability to withdraw the authority it had granted to the prince. While this should be done by the community as a whole, private assassination was justified in some circumstances.

Demands for Religious Toleration for Roman Catholics and Protestants by Edwin Sandys in England

Apart from the ability of the subject or citizen to take part in the process of making political decision, one of the great pillars of modern democracy is freedom of conscience. While both Roman Catholics and Protestants in the Sixteenth century generally wished to suppress each others’ religions through force, there was also a profound desire amongst many Christians for unity and toleration in Christendom. Edwin Sandys, a son of the Archbishop of York and pupil of Richard Hooker, in his A Relation of the State of Religion, criticised the intolerance of both Roman Catholics and Protestants. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants were Christians, and shared the same fundamental beliefs and doctrines that were the essence of Christianity. The doctrinal points that divided them could never be decided for certain. Thus, he felt, that Roman Catholics and Protestants should respect each other, and that the unity of Christendom could be restored through the establishment of a European church based on the Christian doctrines held by both Roman Catholic and Protestant. This was to be done either by a general council, which would impose its authority on the Pope and other participants in the controversy, or by the princes, though he did not feel that they could be trusted to put this into action. In order to put an end to religious disunity and conflict, Sandys wished to prohibit the claims to superiority by the various sects and faiths in Christendom. Instead of persecuting the various Christian sects, governments should instead force them to respect each other. He did not, however, believe that anti-Christian opinions should be tolerated, and so did not advocate modern concepts of secular democracy.

Demands for Toleration of Roman Catholics and Protestants in France by Politiques

The Politiques in France had expressed similar views rather earlier. They were mostly Roman Catholics, but also some Protestants, who regarded with horror the devastation, caused by the Wars of Religion, and felt that the only way to save France from further carnage and destruction was through negotiation and peace with the Huguenots. A 1574 pamphlet described the suffering inflicted on all classes in France by the War, and called for the Huguenots to join a states-general to bring about peace and save France from further destruction. Other pamphlets noted the moral damage the wars had caused, and the way they had discredited Christianity as a whole. The Huguenot writer La Noue declared that the wars had created a million libertines and Epicureans, while other writers stated that religious persecution had not suppressed heresy, but created only atheists. They argued strongly that the only way for states to survive and prosper was by tolerating two religions, and that the state should be above any specific religion. They also strongly argued that the existence of two religions in a country did not necessarily produce civil conflict or disunity, a point of view shared by Henry of Navarre himself. The Politiques were extremely sceptical about the claims of the Churches to possess the sole religious truth, but believed strongly that Roman Catholics and Protestants shared the same, basic, fundamental points of Christian doctrine. Thus the toleration of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism did not threaten the Christian nature of civil society, which was based on the fundamental Christian principles held in common by both Roman Catholic and Protestant. In 1590 the pamphlet Le Pacifique attempted to demonstrate the agreement between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism on fundamental doctrinal points in the form of a dialogue between a Roman Catholic and Protestant, who discover that the share the same basic Christian beliefs.

Demands for Religious Toleration by Sebastien Castillion

Similar views on toleration were held and strongly argued by the humanist Sebastien Castellion and Giacomo Contio, or Acontius. In his De Haereticis an sint persequandi of 1542-5, possibly written with a little assistance from Lelio Sozini, who held Unitarian views, and Martin Borrhee, and his Contra libellum Calvini, written in response to Calvin’s participation in the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy in Geneva, De Arte Dubitandi, the Four Dialogues of 1578, and the Conseil a la France desolee of 1562, Castellion argued for religious toleration. In the De Haereticis he attempted to support his arguments by quotations from some of the early Church Fathers and contemporary theologians and religious authorities such as Luther, Erasmus and Calvin himself. He considered that because there were points of doctrine that could not be decided for certain, all that could be required of people is that they attempt to understand the Word of God and follow it according to their conscience. Castellion felt that Christianity consisted in the knowledge that Christ was the Son of God and that his teachings were divine. He did not believe that religion lay in either ceremonies or beliefs that people could not understand, and firmly stated that Scripture did not support the persecution of those of different religious opinions. One defended religion not by killing for it, but by suffering death. He did, however, believe that the government had the right to punish those who denied the resurrection, the immortality of the soul and the authority of the government, though they should not be executed.

Demands for Complete Freedom of Conscience by Acontius

Acontius was a military engineer who had been employed by Pescara in Milan and Queen Elizabeth in England. In his Strategematum Satanae of 1565 he argued that most people formed their beliefs without the guidance of either reason or God, simply accepting tradition or the opinions of the mass of people around them. They are intolerant of others, partly because they cannot bear to accept that their beliefs may be wrong. He argued that religious controversy and wars were Satan’s way of causing trouble and destruction on Earth. He believed that there were a few basic beliefs necessary for salvation, but that most of Christian doctrine was simply speculation without any real value. He argued that only those doctrines that affected human conduct on Earth had any value. Magistrates had no power to punish heresy, not just because they had no power themselves to do so, but also because there was so much difference in opinion between the Churches on what was heretical that they too had little authority to make such decisions. He believed that there should be absolute freedom of religion, and that people came to the truth through doubt and free inquiry and discussion. For Acontius, those who undoubtedly possessed extremely heretical doctrines should be punished merely with excommunication, which should be a source of regret rather than anger and hatred.

Contribution of Christian Humanists to Education and their Stress on Tolerance and Dialogue rather than Conflict

Another fundamental pillar of democracy is the belief in the value of education, and that a just society and good government must be based on informed, educated opinion. In this area too the Christian humanists of the 16^th century made a profound contribution. Erasmus believed that humans could be assisted to become good as they possessed free will, though this free will itself had to be aided in its turn by God’s grace. The human will could be directed towards goodness through religious devotion and learning. For Erasmus, if princes were educated according to humanist principles, the result would be a good society where princes ruled justly and, following Christ, established peace instead of war. As a result, he and other humanists, such as John Colet in England, established schools and academies. Their influence on the aristocracy was profound. Although their political ideas of a just society was Utopian, their idea of an educated aristocracy informed by humanist culture nearly became reality, so that after the mid-sixteenth century even minor members of the nobility had libraries showing a wide variety of interests. 26 Moreover, Erasmus and his followers, although entirely orthodox Roman Catholics, stressed the importance of dialogue, toleration and the importance of settling matters peacefully, rather than resorting to force. Their stress on God’s love for humanity, rather than His judgement of their actions, influenced Reginald Pole, Contarini, Castellion and the Socinians, and his advocacy of a tolerant Christianity was immensely popular in Spain, especially amongst the Conversos, whose ancestors had converted to Christianity from Judaism to avoid expulsion and persecution. 27

Conclusion:

Both View that Power of the Monarch Absolute and that Royal Power Limited by the Constitution and Sovereignty of the People existed in Sixteenth Century

Thus, although much of the political theory of the sixteenth century stressed the absolute power of the monarch and the duty of their subjects to obey them, there were also other political views, held and defended by both Roman Catholics and Protestants across Europe, that stressed instead the constitutional limits on monarchical power, the importance and role in government of representative assemblies and right and even duty of subjects to resist and depose unjust rulers. Political theorists, theologians and philosophers in England, Scotland, France, Geneva and Switzerland considered that governments had been established for the benefit of their peoples, not the rulers’, that societies and governments were based on contracts and covenants between their members, rulers and the Almighty, and that monarchs owed their power not to any personal virtue, but because the community delegated it to them. The power of the monarch was limited by the law of God and natural law. Princes and parliaments acted as constitutional checks to monarchs to prevent oppression, and who were also representatives of the community and so had a duty to protect their ancient rights. If kings exceeded the bounds of their authority or failed to establish true religion, they could be overthrown by the aristocracy and other leading governmental officials and institutions, or even by private citizens. These views were based on medieval political theory, contemporary interpretation of Scripture and the necessity amongst Roman Catholics and Protestants wishing to defend their religion and defeat and destroy their opponents of finding theoretical support for their resistance to persecution, oppression or the authorities’ failure to maintain the true faith.

Sixteenth Century also Period of Demonds for Religious Toleration, and Improvements in Education

Alongside these demands for political freedom were criticisms of both Roman Catholics and Protestants for their intolerance, and demands for an end to religious persecution and freedom of conscience amongst a very few individual political theorists. Furthermore, the Christian humanist belief that the human will could be formed and directed towards goodness through education led to the foundation of schools and libraries, and an attitude of tolerance and dialogue rather than violent coercion.

Influence of Demands for Constitutional Limits to Monarchy and Participation in Government of People and Representative Assemblies and Religious Toleration Limited in 16th Century, but had strong Influence in 17th Century England

The impact of these ideas was limited, however. Although princes in Poland, Hungary and elsewhere granted toleration to various Christian denominations and sects, this did not necessarily prevent them from acquiring increasing power over their tenants’ lives and properties, so that during the 16^th century serfdom increased. In western Europe, in France, Germany and Spain political power became increasingly centralised in the monarch and representative institutions, such as the estates, declined in importance, eventually to produce the absolutist monarchies of the 18^th century. Nevertheless, these doctrines continued to have an effect. The Vindiciae, although largely abandoned by the Huguenots shortly after its publication, influenced contemporary Dutch political ideas and considerably influenced English political theories in the 17^th century. 28 Castellion’s demands for religious toleration influenced the radical theologian, Dirck Volckentzoon Coornhert. In turn, he influenced Arminius, who otherwise strongly opposed and argued against his theology. Arminius’ religious views strongly influenced British theology and political theories in the 17^th century, during the British Civil War/ War of the Three Kingdoms. In England although it was not noticed at the time, claims such as Thomas Smith’s that it was parliament that really represented every individual in the country pointed towards the Civil War in the next century. 29 Thus, while Europe generally became more authoritarian following the sixteenth century, nevertheless the political theories stressing the constitutional limits on monarchical governments and the role of representative assemblies influenced the Netherlands and Britain, creating the ideas for greater religious and political freedom that were to appear in the 17^th century and which found practical expression in the British Civil War/ War of the Three Kingdoms and the development of modern, political theories like John Locke’s.

Notes

1. Koenigsberger and Mosse, Sixteenth Century, pp. 104-5.
2. Koenigsberger and Mosse, Sixteenth Century, pp. 105-6.
3. Allen, History of Political Thought, p. 331.
4. Allen, History of Political Thought, p. 268.

The Divine Right of Kings and Secular Politicians

In a comment to an earlier post of mine, Jor, one of the great commentators to this blog, expressed the view that modern cops and politicians felt they had the same divine right to rule as medieval kings. I was sceptical of this, as although politicians and the police do consider that they have an automatic right to rule and enforce those rules, this is almost exclusively based on secular political theory, rather than theology. Nevertheless, the great architectural historian, Lewis Mumford, held a similar view that the state’s claim to power over its subjects and their property was based on the divine right of kings, and traced this conception of the state’s right to sovereignty to the very origins of kingship and civilisation itself in ancient mesopotamia.

In his classic book, The City in History, Mumford states that

‘Private property begins, not as Proudhon thought with robbery, but with the treatment of all common property as the private possession of the king, whose life and welfare were identified with that of the community. Property was an extension and enlargement of his own personality, as the unique representative of the collective whole. But once this claim was accepted, property could for the first time be alienated, that is, removed from the community by the individual gift of the king.

This conception of the royal possessions remained in its original form well past the time of Louis XIV. That Sun King, a little uneasy over the heavy taxes he desired to impose, called together the learned Doctors of Paris to decide if his exactions were morally justifiable. Their theology was equal to the occasion. They explained that the entire realm was his by divine right: hence in laying on these new taxes he was only taxing himself. This prerogative was passed on, undefiled, to the ‘sovereign state’, which in emergencies falls back, without scruple, on ancient myth and magic.’ 1

Now while this was probably true of Louis XIV’s government, the situation was rather different for his successor, Louis XIV. His reign ended and the French Revolution broke out partly because of the monarchy’s inability to the raise the taxes it needed to run the country through the obstruction of the Parlement of Paris and other, regional parlements that ruled the new taxes unconstitutional, while the vast wealth of the nobility and church was unavailable as they were exempt from taxation. For example, when Louis XVI’s Controleur-General, Turgot, attempted to reform the French agricultural system according to Physiocratic ideas of free trade, the reforms were vehemently attacked by the Parlement of Paris. In his Six Edicts of 1776, Turgot attempted to free the internal grain trade, abolish the guilds and convert the corvee – the labour service performed by the rural peasantry – into a money tax paid by all landlords. The Parlement of Paris, the assembly of French lawyers which examined royal legislation to see if it was constitutional before it could be passed, rejected it as an intolerable attack on privilege. Their comments demanding its rejection denounced it as a ‘project produced by an inadmissible system of equality, whose first effect would be to confound all orders in the state by imposing on them the uniform burden of a land tax’. 2 Confronted with this opposition, Louis backed down and dismissed Turgot.

Mumford himself had a negative view of the social effects of the rise of civilisation. He viewed the development of the city and the settled state as a process by which the earliest, egalitarian communities, ruled by a council of elders and characterised by little difference in social roles and comparative wealth between its members, was destroyed and replaced by absolute states, characterised by a social stratefication that reduced many of their citizens to slavery, forced individuals into specialised social and economic roles, and ruled by military aristocracies. These early states were totalitarian and belligerent, with power eventually becoming centralised in the person of the king, and maintained by warfare against rival states. It’s a view of the origins of the state that, in looking back to a more egalitarian, democratic state before the rise of civilisation, has much in common with the contemporary distrust of civilisation as a whole and a very positive view of indigenous, tribal societies who are believed to be more noble and egalitarian than industrial, technological cultures. Given this awareness of the oppressive consequences of the development of the autocratic state in antiquity, it’s possibly not surprising that Mumford was similarly critical of the tendencies towards centralisation and authoritarianism in modern, industrial states.

It’s probably safe to say that most people would reject the idea that the aristocratic, centralised monarchies of the ancient world had anything in common with contemporary secular, democratic politics, beyond the fact that many of the problems and issues that occupied the early kings, such as their statements that they intended to support justice, maintain or create prosperity and defend their nation against invaders are the same issues that face just about every politician and statesman. However, Mumford’s comment here, like JOR’s, does pose the interesting problem of how much of the modern conception of the state is due not to the rational analysis of its nature and powers, but derived from the idea of the state as it was constructed in remote antiquity, and passed down since then as a fundamental assumption that is simply accepted as automatically true and rational, rather than analysed and debated. This is not to say that the state is necessarily oppressive or coercive, as even in antiquity there were debates about the nature of the state and how it could be organised to give the greatest freedom and justice. Nevertheless, modern politics after the horrors of the totalitarian regimes of left and right in the 20th century is acutely aware of how oppressive the power of the state can be in the hands of those determined to destroy its citizens’ freedom. An awareness of the authoritarian nature of some ancient states, and the process by which their citizens attempted to reform it and check the power of monarchies and oppressive governments, such as in democratic Athens or ancient Rome, clearly have important lessons for contemporary, democratic states, despite the immense differences in time, culture and the nature of the ancient civilisations.

Notes

1. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations and Its Prospects (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1961), p. 129.

2. E.N. Williams, The Ancien Regime in Europe: Government and Society in the Major States 1648-1789 (London, Penguin 1970), p. 239.

Stem Cell Embryo Research: British MPs to Vote

Tomorrow and Tuesday British MPs are to vote on research on human embryonic stem cells. It’s an intensely controversial area. On the one hand, the scientists involved in the research argue that the use of such cells from human embryos will lead to significant advances in understanding numerous diseases, such as Alzheimers. According to the British edition of The Week, which covers the reports of the press for the previous week a month or so ago, the government’s bill to permit such experimentation had the support of 200 charities. The bill has the staunch backing of premier Gordon Brown himself, who in an article in one of the broadsheet newspapers today declared that it had his total backing and repeated the arguments that it would lead to disease.

Others, particularly members of the opposition with strong religious convictions, are not so sure. One of the issues being debated is the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, in which DNA from the nucleus of human cells will be implanted into those of animals to create chimeras that will be 99.9 per cent human. The debate will also include the creation of ‘saviour siblings’, children deliberately created to be genetic or medical donors for older brothers or sisters suffering from disease, and the morality of creating children without fathers through artificial insemination. The veteran Conservative MP, Anne Widdecombe, who has very strong religious views, stated in an interview on the BBC Six O’clock news tonight that unlike adult and umbilical stem cell research, embryonic stem cell research had produced absolutely no results so far. However, as embryonic stem cell research is morally problematic, the scientists involved should show that it will produce the scientific advances they claim before such experimentation may be permitted. She is not alone. I’ve come across statements on some American Conservative newswebsites from businessmen running biotech companies, whose interests include stem cell research, that they are not involved with human embryonic stem cells not just because it conflicts with their Christian morals, but also for the entirely practical reason that such research so far has produced no results.

 Opponents of embryonic stem cell research, such as the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, have argued that such research is immoral because it implicitly declares that some human beings have no intrinsic value and so may be treated or abused however society wishes. His comments were greeted with sneers from some particularly anti-religious members of the press, such as the Guardian’s and Observer’s journalist, Polly Toynbee. Toynbee dismissed Wright’s concerns as ‘religious’ and stated that it was irrational, because it gave DNA, a mere molecule, more rights than a human suffering from one of the diseases such research is supposed to cure. This is, however, to misunderstand Wright’s point. DNA is indeed a molecule, but through it scientists plan to create a human deliberately for the purposes of experimentation. The moral question is not about DNA – though they are one part of it – but about the status and creation of human, or partly human creatures for experimentation. And such grave concerns about the use and morality of genetic engineering is by no means confined to people of faith. In 1969 the biologists James Shapiro and Jonathan Beckwith isolated the first gene, belonging to bacteria allowing them to ingest milk sugars. The discovery made the first page of the New York Times, where it was hailed as the beginning of a new genetic age. Shapiro, however, was so horrified by the implications of his discovery that he announced his retirement from science and fled to Cuba to teach genetics. He quickly decided that he’d made the wrong career choice, however, and returned to America two years later, and has told journalists since that he would not repeat that episode. 1 Other scientists shared his concerns. In 1976 Irwin Chargaff, a biochemist at Columbia University, questioned the morality of genetic experimentation, writing ‘have we the right to counteract, irreversibly, the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years, in order to satisfy the ambition and curiosity of a few scientists?’ 2 This was followed by a letter to Science by Philip Siekevitz, a biologist at Rockefeller university, expressing serious concerns about genetic research and its potential dangers, and urging scientists to restrain their curiosity:

‘Are we really that much farther along on the path to comprehensive knowledge that we can forget the overwhelming pride with which Dr. Frankenstein made his monster and the Rabbi of Prague made his Golem? Those who would answer ‘Yes’ I would accuse of harboring that sin which the Greeks held to be one of the greatest, that of overweening pride. Like the physicists before us, we have entered the realm of the Faustian bargain, and it behooves all of us biologists to think very carefully about the conditions of these agreements before we plunge ahead into the darkness.’ 3

His fears are not unfounded. The technique of cloning an organism by replacing the nucleus of a different, host cell, with that of animal to be cloned and then implanting the resulting cell in the womb was first suggested in 1938 by Hans Spermann in Germany. Amongst those interested in his theory were members of the Nazi regime, who saw it as another method of creating the master race at the heart of Hitler’s eugenics and racial theories. Fortunately his ideas were impracticable because the technology of the time simply wasn’t advanced enough. 4 Following the creation of Dolly the Sheep by cloning, President Bill Clinton under advice from a specially convened Federal bioethics commission in May 1997 attempted to ban human nuclear transfer cloning. This was rejected by Congress, which did, however, pass his bill to remove federal funding from – but not ban – human cloning for research purposes. The British government legalised human cloning for scientific research in January 2001, stipulating that such embryos should be used solely for research and not implanted in a womb. However, there is a loophole in the legislation in that implantation is relatively simple procedure that could be done in an hour, and such a process could be done quite legally in any country that had not adopted the same legislation as Britain. 5 One of the serious issues that constantly recurs during debates on cloning is the deliberate creation of clones as spare parts for existing humans, as in the recent SF film, The Island, or the SF book, Mortal Gods. In these fictional works, however, the clones used as unwilling donors for existing humans are functioning adults, rather than embryos. Nevertheless, the moral problem in using embryos as a source of spare parts for transplant remains.

Amongst those who have written on the moral problems presented by current genetic research are doctors and scientists of Christian faith. Dr. Patrick Dixon, a Christian pastor and medical doctor, has stated his reasons for unease about the use of human foetal tissue in transplant surgery. While he has no objections to the use of material from a stillborn or miscarried child, as the unfortunate baby is already dead and so the process is similar to the use of transplanted organs from an adult, he makes it clear that he is ‘very unhappy’ about the use of foetal tissue because it is produced through deliberately induced abortions. At the moment, existing legislation means that there must be no relationship between the clinic performing the abortion and those conducting the research. He has stated, however, that he is slightly less uneasy about experiments on fertilised eggs and small balls of cells up to the first week of life, partly because of the need to be consistent. Some forms of birth control now used are not contraceptives but effectively work by aborting the very early fertilised embryo, and so would have to be declared illegal if conception is considered as the beginning of human life. For example, the coil works to prevent pregnancy not through preventing conception, but by preventing the fertilised cell from adhering to the walls of the womb, thus in a strict sense producing a possible abortion. 6 He states, however, that he does not consider it right to deliberately fertilise human eggs for the purpose of experimentation, as this appears to him to trivialise the nature of life itself. 7 His views are shared by many other doctors and medical professionals of Christian faith. In 1990 the Christian Medical Fellowship, which has a membership of about 4,500 British doctors, submitted an article outlining its concerns and suggested ethical guidelines for research to the British Medical Association’s working party on genetic engineering. This made a number of valuable recommendations, including the following:

On the subject of possible exploitation of people for research purpose, it stated that ‘Christians are concerned that the individual, particularly if weak or disadvantaged in any way, is protected. Those who might be benefited by advances in genetic research are vulnerable to being persuaded to be ‘guinea pigs’ and exploited either commenercially or by prestige-seeking research workers.

The child needs protection and the status of the embryo and foetus must also be considered. Counselling should be provided by well-informed sympathetic clinicians, particularly clinical geneticists rather than by those whose commitment is primarily to research.’ 8 

On the status of the pre-implantation embryo, the Fellowship stated that

‘members of the CMF vary in their views as to the status of the fertilised ovum and pre-implantation embryo. Many believe that from teh time of fertilisation the ‘image of God’ is present, thus making the embryo a unique person who should be recognised and treated in all respects as a neighbour. They would therefore find all the following techniques unacceptable.

Others believe that although at the early stages the pre-implantation embryo is indisputably human, it has not yet the attributes of the ‘image of God’ and so may be implanted or discarded.

Nevertheless, there must be atime at which such attributes and status are attained. All members agree that once they are attained, that individual is of infinite value. All agree too that the relationships between husband and wife, parent adn child are of central importance both for the well-being of the individual and for the whole of society. We believe that children are entrusted to their parents to be nurturned and brought to maturity as individuals in their own right.’ 9

Despite their differences of opinion on the status of pre-implantation embryos, the Fellowship condemned cloning and the creation of chimeras through the fusion of human and animal sex cells that proceed to bastocyst and beyond. The Fellowship declared that these techniques were ‘unacceptable since we believe that humans, made in the image of God, are distinct from the animals and should remain so. Each individual is unique and that distinctiveness is important both to that person and to society. It is true that identical twins occur naturally and that each is a person in his or her own right, but some twins do have difficulties establishing their own identity.’ 10 In the submission’s conclusion, the Fellowship stated that they believed that ‘doctors should acts as stewards, helping mankind to make the most of its potential and prepared to correct abnormalities, but not as dictators, manipulating all for selfish ends.

Inevitably there is a difference of opinion as to where these roles begin and end. Some feel that work on early embryos is unacceptably interfering adn that the risk of disaster outweighs the potential benefits. Others believe that cautious exploration is the right way forward. All Christian Medical Fellowship members agree that we are responsible now to our patients and their families, but ultimately responsible to our Creator for the decisions we make today.’ 11

The debate over the morality of human embryo research and relating fields such as cloning and genetic engineering is not simply one of religious faith in conflict with science, as those concerned with the ethical implications of such research include practising scientists and medical doctors, both religious and secular. Moreover, the ethical concerns expressed by religious non-scientists are entirely genuine problems, which need to be addressed. The great American bioethicist and Biblical commentator, Dr. Leon R. Kass, discussing cloning, declared that it provided ‘the occasion as well as the urgent necessity of deciding whether we shall be slaves of unregulated progres and ultimately its artifacts or whether we shall remain free human beings to guide our technique towards the enhancement of human dignity. 12 Kass himself has strong views against cloning following his reading of a column about it by Joshua Lederberg in the Washington Post in September 1967, which he viewed as showing a lack of understanding on its implications. As a result, he was invited by the Princeton University theologian Paul Ramsey to discuss it and related ethical issues, and so becoming more involved with theologians and philosophers. 13 As a biochemist, like the members of the Christian Medical Fellowship in Britain, Kass is certainly very well aware of the science supporting such research. Nevertheless, in his view the only serious answer to the immense moral problems posed by cloning and related issues may be the complete abandonment of such research, despite the opportunities it offers for scientific advance. Kass has quoted his colleague, Paul Ramsey, on this issue, stating

‘Raise the ethical questions with a serious and not a frivolous conscience. A man of frivolous conscience announces that there are ethical quandaries ahead that we must urgently consider before the future catches up with us. By this he often means that we need to devise a new ethics that will provide the rationalization for doing in the future what men are bound to do because of the new actions and interventions science will have made possible. In contrast, a man of serious conscience means to say in raising urgent ethical questions that there may be some things that men should never do. The good things that men do can be made complete only by the things that they refused to do.’ 14

My own view is that Anne Widdecombe is exactly right about human embryonic research, and particularly about the dubious morality of the creation of the human-animal hybrids to be used. As it appears that such stem cell research has produced few results, and because of the immense moral problems it presents, it should therefore be discontinued. Everyone wants cures to be found for disease, including, and perhaps particularly, such devasting illnesses as Alzheimers that gradually destroys the minds of its victims. However, some of these cures come at too high a cost morally, particularly when other areas of research, like adult and umbilical stem cells, offer much better prospects of results.  

Notes

1. G. Kolata, Clone: The Road to Dolly the Sheep and the Path Ahead (London, Penguin 1997), p. 91.

2. Kolata,  Clone, p. 95.

3. Kolate, Clone, p. 95.

4. H. Brennan, Death: The Great Mystery of Life (Bridgnorth, Eye Books 2005), pp. 120-1.

5. Brennan, Death, p. 128.

6. Dr. P. Dixon, The Genetic Revolution (Eastbourne, Kingsway Publications 1993), pp. 179-180.

7. Dixon, Genetic Revolution, p. 180.

8. ‘Christian Medical Fellowship Submission to British Medical Association on Genetic Engineering’, from Journal of the Christian Medical Fellowship, January 1990, pp. 18-22, in Dixon, Genetic Revolution, pp. 193-4.

9. ‘Christian Medical Fellowship Submission to British Medical Association on Genetic Engineering’, from Journal of the Christian Medical Fellowship, January 1990, pp. 18-22, in Dixon, Genetic Revolution, p. 195.

10. ‘Christian Medical Fellowship Submission to British Medical Association on Genetic Engineering’, from Journal of the Christian Medical Fellowship, January 1990, pp. 18-22, in Dixon, Genetic Revolution, p. 198.

11.’Christian Medical Fellowship Submission to British Medical Association on Genetic Engineering’, from Journal of the Christian Medical Fellowship, January 1990, pp. 18-22, in Dixon, Genetic Revolution, p. 199.

12. Kolata, Clone, p. 15.

13. Kolata, Clone, pp. 76-77.

14. Kolata, Clone, p. 15.

The Philosophes: Pillars of the Enlightenment but not Democracy

The 18^th century French philosophes are rightly respected for the key role they played in the development of the Enlightenment. They were ardent in their desire to spread knowledge, education, toleration and humane values. Diderot, the editor of the great Encyclopedia that was such a major influence in spreading not just the practical knowledge of contemporary arts and sciences, but also the ideals of the Enlightenment itself, wrote to Voltaire in 1762 declaring that their motto was ‘no quarter for the superstitious, for the fanatical, for the ignorant, for the foolish, for the wicked and for the tyrants’.1 Attacking the ignorance, corruption, injustice and fanaticism of contemporary society, the Philosophes were ‘informed, warm-hearted, tolerant, and humane; they fought obscurantism, bigotry, prejudice, and injustice. They believed that the world could be made a better place to live in, and that the sum of human happiness could be increased. They favoured equality before the law, humane punishments, the career open to the talents, proportional taxation, universal education.’ 2

 French Philosophes Not Political Radicals

The Philosophes weren’t democrats, however. Despite their implacable hostility to injustice and oppression, they did not advocate revolution or any major alterations to the structure of French government and society itself. While Voltaire and Montesquieu were ardent admirers of Britain, they did not advocate that British institutions should be imported into France. Indeed, the Philosophes were staunch supporters of the monarchy. The article on Political Economy in Diderot’s Encyclopedia declared that it was only the monarchy that had ‘discovered the real means of enabling us to enjoy all the possible happiness and liberty and all the advantages which man in society can enjoy on the earth.’ 3 There was considerable disagreement amongst the Philosophes on the best form of government and society. Voltaire denounced all privileged groups, like the parlements, clergy and aristocracy, for obstructing attempts at reform by a benevolent monarchy. Montesquieu, on the other hand, favoured reinforcing their power against the tyrannical power of the monarchy. Some of their ideas were also self-contradictory. Historians and philosophers examining Rousseau’s rhetoric have found arguments supporting both socialism and private property, democracy and authoritarianism, Puritanism and hedonism. ‘The Enlightenment was many-sided. It did not advocate any one doctrine – and certainly not the doctrines of democracy or rebellion.’ 4

 French Roman Catholicism as the Source of Political Discontent and Democratic Ideals

Instead, historians have pointed to the clergy and the parlements for promoting radical discontent with the French monarchy. Early in the 18^th century, Archbishop Fenelon was particularly critical in his denunciation of the suffering inflicted on the French people by Louis XIV’s government. In his Lettre au Roi, written in Cambrai after Fenelon had retired from court politics, he bitterly attacked Louis’ massive accumulation of power at the expense of his subjects. Addressed to the king himself, Fenelon wrote

 ‘For about thirty years your principal ministers have shaken and overthrown all the former maxims of the State in order to heap up to its height your authority, which had become their because it was in their hands. They have talked no longer about the State or about laws, they have talked only of the King and his good pleasure … you have destroyed half the real power inside your State in order to make and defend vain conquests outside. Instead of drawing money from these poor people, you should give them alms and nourish them. The whole of France is nothing more than a great poorhouse, desolated and provisionless.’ 5

 The French Lower Clergy and Ideals of Spiritual Equality

Furthermore, despite Voltaire’s denunciation of religion, and particularly Christianity for promoting intolerance and oppression, one of the main sources for the growth of democratic ideals in France was the lower French clergy. The 60,000 or so vicaires and cures, who comprised the main body of the 18^th century French Roman Catholic clergy were largely members of the middle classes, in contrast to the upper clergy who were exclusively composed of members of the aristocracy. The lower clergy resented the idleness and wealth of their ecclesiastical superiors, who consumed most of the tithes while they subsisted on a tiny stipend. 6 These clergy tended to support richerisme in their view of the location of spiritual authority in the Church, considering that God had not given this authority exclusively to the Pope or the bishops, but equally to all members of the clergy. 7 They were also largely Gallican in their attitude to the power of the papacy. While Ultramontane Roman Catholics, such as the Jesuits, viewed the papacy as possessing sole authority in the Church, The Gallicans, on the other hand, viewed the church as a kind of constitutional monarchy in which councils were superior to the papacy. 8 The local church played a major role in village life. It was the place where the villagers stored their timber and grain, and made their business deals. It also played a strong political role. The priest informed his congregation of government regulations through reading them out as part of his sermon, and the church was also the location for the election of the local tax-collectors. 9 Given the close connection between the French lower clergy and their congregation, it isn’t surprising that the lower clergy’s ideas of equality within the ecclesiastical hierarchy encouraged the development of democratic ideas in wider, secular society. ‘And if the clergy believed in democracy in the Church, it is not surprising that their flocks favoured equality in the state.’ 10

 Influence of American Revolution and John Locke’s Christian Ideas of Society on French Revolution

Lastly, one of the most powerful direct influences on the outbreak of the French Revolution was that American Revolution. By sending French troops to assist the Americans against the British crown, Louis XVI had demonstrated that armed resistance to the monarchy could be patriotic, rather than an act of treason. The American Revolution also provided a direct model for the French, by demonstrating that it was possible for a nation’s people to create a completely new form of government through a constituent assembly composed of elected delegates. It was a model for those who wished to completely recreate French government and society, rejecting both divine-right monarchy and the traditional opposing institutions of the French state. 11 The democratic ideas of the American Revolution were also strongly informed by Christian religious views of the nature of human society. John Locke was a major influence on the development of the American constitution, and the resounding statement of the Declaration of Independence that people are endowed by the Creator with the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and have the right to alter or abolish any government that destroys these rights, encapsulates the ideas of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. 12 Although Locke was a Socinian, rather than an orthodox, Trinitarian Christian, nevertheless his ideas of the law of nature have been criticised by contemporary poltical theorists as being derived from orthodox Christian doctrine. 13

Influence of the American Great Awakening in the Development of American Democracy

Historians have also pointed to the profound influence played by the 18^th century evangelical revival – the Great Awakening – in the development of American democratic ideals. The Great Awakening saw lower and middle class Americans turn away from what they viewed as the corrupt, aristocratic established churches to create new churches and religious forms of their own, based not on the idea that spiritual authority was invested and conveyed through hierarchies, but was available to each believer through the experience of God’s saving grace. Leading evangelical preachers, such as George Whitefield, troubled the established leaders of New England society because

‘they spread the message that God did not operate through the elite corps of learned clergy and their aristocratic allies. Rather, God worked through the inner light given to every man and woman regardless of their station in life, with lack of education or even slave status posing now barrier to achieving grace through the conversion experience. Whitefield challenged traditional source of authority, called upon people to become the instruments of their own salvation, and implicitly attacked the prevailing upper-class notion that the uneducated masses had no minds of their own.’ 14 The result of this more democratically orientated religious revival was that ordinary, working-class Americans created religious institutions of their own to satisfy their religious needs that were not being met by the established churches. One such working-class religious leader was Samuel Morris, a self-educated bricklayer who stopped attending Anglican worship and instead held religious meetings in a small ‘reading house’ that he built himself on his own property. This soon expanded into a network of similar reading houses established across the western counties of Virginia. Elsewhere in western Virginia, ordinary people held their unlicensed meetings in barns and riverbanks, with the result that authority was collectively relocated in the mass of the common people. 15 The Great Awakening thus provided a powerful model for the later American revolutionaries, as it created a mass movement that challenged upper class assumptions about social order and the duty of the lower classes to obey their social superiors. Its members broke away from the established church they regarded as corrupt to build new churches of their own, often without license. They demanded and achieved religious toleration, destroyed attempts to unite church and state, and by fracturing the existing churches threatened the social order. When the ministers of the traditional churches urged their congregations to ‘obey them that have rule over you’, following the commands of St. Paul, those inspired by the Great Awakening claimed the freedom, in the view of historians such as Patrician Bonomi, ‘to question and judge all and refuse subjection to every proper judicature’, thus creating a ‘pertinent and usable model’ for the later Revolutionaries. 16

Conclusion: Democratic Ideals of American and French Revolutions Created by American and English Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholic French Lower Clergy, not French Philosophes

Thus, despite their strong opposition to the forces of intellectual and social oppression in France, the philosophes of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire were certainly not democrats. The democratic ideals that created the American and French Revolutions instead were based strongly on religious notions of equality amongst the French Roman Catholic lower clergy and English and American Protestant revivalism. In France this more democratic attitude amongst the clergy did not lead to the intellectual and religious toleration prised and championed by the Philosophes. The 17^th century saw the vicious persecution of French Protestants and their eventual expulsion from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Nevertheless, it was the ideals of spiritual equality developed by the French lower clergy and American working- and middle-class evangelical revivalists that created the democratic ideals that eventually produced the American and French Revolutions, and so created the models for later democracies around the world.

 Notes

 1. E.N. Williams, The Ancien Regime in Europe: Government and Society in the Major States 1648-1789 (London, Penguin Books 1970), p. 227.

2. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 227. 

3. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 231.

4. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 231.

5. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 195.

6. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 224.

7. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 194.

8. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 184.

9. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 170.

10. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 224.

11. Williams, Ancien Regime, p. 240.

12. N. Warburton, Philosophy: The Classics, Second Edition (London, Routledge 2001), p. 91.

13. Warburton, Philosophy: The Classics, p. 97.

14. G.B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (London, Jonathan Cape 2006), pp. 8-9.

15. Nash, Unknown American Revolution, p. 10.

16. P. Bonomi, cited in Nash, Unknown American Revolution, p. 12.