The Recognition of the Fall and the Imperative for Self Criticism:
The Basis of the Christian Revolution
I believe that many of us here at Forest Home have observed, run up against, or even been wounded by a type of
what I’ll call “abusive certitude”. In Lois’ and my experience, this took the shape of something like this: “Give
me that Old Time Religion – it’s good enough for me (and it better be good enough for you, Buster!)! We’re
going to heaven, you’re going to hell, and we’re good with that!”
Smug self-satisfaction such as this, along with the conditioning of our culture, may make us leery of studies like
this one, which is, in essence, “What’s Right about Christianity: How Christianity has made the world a better
place.” As Lance has said in our first class, echoing David Bentley Hart, Christianity made a revolutionary
impact on humanity that manifested in historically stupendous advances. Kenneth Grasso seconds the point:
“the rise of Christianity precipitated a revolution in human self-understanding.”i Social historian Rodney Stark,
an agnostic when he made the statement, proclaims, “Christian theology is the catalyst, not the brake, for
progress in Western history.”ii
The potential danger of such pronouncements is that they may be inhabited by a kind of self-satisfied
triumphalism, leading (we might fear) to a bragging, bullying feeling of superiority. And, in fact, that danger has
existed and will continue to exist as long as mankind, even redeemed mankind, endures. But, as we will see, the
comparative progress of Western Civilization originated in sentiment diametrically opposed to triumphalism.
Of course, we live in the great era of Tolerance, with a capital “t”. All of us studied geography growing up, which,
at least in my own case, contained the subtext “let’s not compare or critique cultures – let’s only assess physical
and economic differences and describe culture. Let’s explain the world in terms of a wonderful, colorful quilt of
equally valuable cultures.” Having substitute taught a geography class in the relatively recent past, I know it to
remain the case at an even more insistent level. However, that tolerance has rarely been extended to
Christianity.
Most of us are pretty well versed, or think we are, in the failings of Christianity. We “know” (not in the sense,
generally, of having delved into the topic, but as matter of hearsay) about bad Popes and bishops, about
Crusades and Inquisitions, about unholy alliances of church and state, about Hundred Years’ Wars and the
suppression of science. We may even see the influence of Christianity as mostly bad, or at least embarrassingly
inconsistent. And yet, we have to account somehow for the way we are able to live as opposed to people outside
the West (which, we should recognize, was formerly known as Christendom, the lands where Christianity held
sway). There are many who claim to know exactly why the West has achieved its advantage – they have
enslaved and stolen from other cultures. That’s the subtext of many of the movies I’ve watched over the past 20
years, and of many academic articles I’ve read. But there are a great many eminent academics who note that the
record of Christianity in the world is far more good than bad, even in the face of all the weak-will or downright
pathetic Christians that have produced that record – people like us. And it has been not just one better option
among many, but the lynchpin of progress in social justice and material advances.
It should not surprise us that Christian people, even Christian leaders, should fail or be hard-headed, hardhearted and resist instant, complete and permanent conversion to the law of Christ – we know our own
histories. Christians exhibit all the perverse tendencies that mankind, at all times and at all places, has
demonstrated. What we should marvel at is that leaders among people like that should ever adopt and apply
principles that give up the advantages they possess by heritage or conquest. Yet they did, over time. The
question is, Why?
It is a bit counterintuitive that the very thing that has made Western civilization great, in the sense of both its
physical and cultural accomplishments, is its intrinsically critical attitude toward itself – an attitude of selfexamination. The secular Arab scholar Ibn Warraq (who, by the way, must write under that pen name for fear
of reprisal from Islamic “true believers”) writes in his book Defending the West that the unique cultural
component of the “West”, that which accounts for its progress towards justice, is its self-criticism. As he points
out in an article on the topic, “How to Reform Islam”, it has been found nowhere else, historically.iii
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Warraq’s view is echoed from a surprising source, the Saudi reformist Islamic thinker, Ibrahim Al-Buleihi.
Listen to his almost embarrassing rhapsody to the merits of Western culture:
My attitude towards Western civilization is an attitude based on obvious facts and great accomplishments;
here is a reality full of wonderful and amazing things. [Recognizing] this doesn't mean that I am blindly
fascinated. This is the very opposite of the attitude of those who deny and ignore the bright lights of Western
civilization. Just look around… and you will notice that everything beautiful in our life has been produced by
Western civilization: even the pen that you are holding in your hand, the recording instrument in front of you,
the light in this room, and the journal in which you work, and many innumerable amenities, which are like
miracles for the ancient civilizations.… If it were not for the accomplishments of the West, our lives would
have been barren. I only look objectively and value justly what I see and express it honestly. Whoever does not
admire great beauty is a person who lacks sensitivity, taste, and observation. Western civilization has reached
the summit of science and technology. It has achieved knowledge, skills, and new discoveries, as no previous
civilization before it. The accomplishments of Western civilization cover all areas of life: methods of
organization, politics, ethics, economics, and human rights. It is our obligation to acknowledge its amazing
excellence. Indeed, this is a civilization that deserves admiration. … The horrible backwardness in which
some nations live is the inevitable result of their refusal to accept this [abundance of Western ideas and
visions] while taking refuge in denial and arrogance."
My admiration for the West is not at the expense of others; rather, it is an invitation to those others to
acknowledge their illusions and go beyond their inferiority and liberate themselves from backwardness. [Those
others] should admit their shortcomings, and make an effort to overcome them; they should stop denying the
truth and closing their eyes to the multitude of wonderful achievements. They should be fair towards those
nations that achieved prosperity for themselves but did not monopolize it for themselves and instead
allowed the whole world to share the results of this progress, so that other nations of the whole world now
enjoy these achievements. Furthermore, Western civilization has given to the world knowledge and skills
which made it possible for them, the non-Western nations, to compete with it in production and share
markets with it. Criticizing one's own deficiencies is a precondition to inducing oneself to change for the
better.
There is no one reason, there are a thousand reasons, which all induce me to admire the West and emphasize
its absolute excellence in all matters of life. Western civilization is the only civilization that liberated man from
his illusions and shackles; it recognized his individuality and provided him with capabilities and opportunities to
cultivate himself and realize his aspirations. [Western civilization] humanized political authority and established
mechanisms to guarantee relative equality and relative justice and to prevent injustice and to alleviate
aggression. This does not mean that this is a flawless civilization; indeed, it is full of deficiencies. Yet it is the
greatest which man has achieved throughout history. [Before the advent of Western civilization,] humanity was
in the shackles of tyranny, impotence, poverty, injustice, disease, and wretchedness. (my emphasis)
He identifies the root of all this progress:
… Western civilization believes … that human perfection is impossible, so man must strive to achieve it while
recognizing that it is impossible to reach. Thus it is the only civilization which is constantly growing and
constantly reviewing and correcting itself and achieving continuous discoveries. …"iv (my emphasis)
I should note that neither Warraq nor Al-Buleihi locate Western exceptionalism in Judeo-Christianity, but rather
in the European Enlightment, which both reckon as deriving from the Greeks. Warraq sees the Enlightenment
as the inheritor of Greek rationalism and philosophical self-critique, rather than the result of the refining action
of Christianity. This is a view in agreement with some of the original thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as
Hobbes and Spinoza. In truth, the Enlightenment philosophes saw Christianity (and specifically Catholicism) to
be the great enemy of progress, as outlined in the famous Critiques of Religion. In the Philosophical Dictionary,
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Voltaire defined religion as 'the enemy of man'.v Jean Meslier exclaimed, “I would like the last of the kings to be
strangled by the guts of the last priest."
But the Enlightenment critique is difficult to back. The eminent historian Carl Becker recognizes the
Enlightenment's unacknowledged debt to "medieval Christian thought." He paraphrases Shakespeare: "There
is more . . . Christian philosophy in the writings of the philosophes," he concludes, "than has yet been dreamt of
in our histories.” Likewise, the prominent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, a self-avowed atheist and
secularist, shocked many professors and journalists by affirming not only the importance of religion for
civilization but also the obligation of secularist thinkers to engage with religion seriously and honestly. He
questioned whether secularists had the honesty to admit their debts to Judaism and Christianity for the basic
formulations of the Enlightenment. “Are not our enlightened concepts of equality and fairness, secular
distillations of time-honored Judeo-Christian precepts?” he asked. “What would secular humanism be without
these borrowings?”
Becker and Habermas notice what is so often missed, even by Christians themselves: the concepts that have led
to human flourishing did not derive from the Enlightenment except by extension; rather, the Enlightenment
arose from the implications of distinctively Judeo-Christian understandings. And those understandings derive
from the Creator. To attempt to locate Western progress, or even Western self–critique, in the Enlightenment
fails to account both for the substantial progress that preceded it (detailed with great care by authors such as
Russell Kirk, Christopher Dawson, Rodney Stark, Thomas Woods, Robert Royal and George Weigel among many
othersvi) and for the distinctly non-enlightened bloodshed (think French and Russian revolutions) that issued
from it.
But why should self-criticism be the key? Because the alternative to critique is acceptance of the status quo.
Fatalism is the term that describes this outlook. Whether in primitive form, or the guise of modernism, it forms
the basis of false religion. Christian thinker Udo Middlemann puts it this way:
“When we wear the glasses of false religions, we tend to become tied to impersonal nature (everything is
matter, energy, and forces) or to powerful personal gods (everything is spiritual, faith, and
submission)…Repetitive formulas and practices will explain away all the ups and downs of life by advocating
some kind of master plan to be followed, a plan in which all events have their assigned place and
purpose…(such religion) seeks to kill the sensation of pain rather than to deal with it objectively…(these)
religions describe ways to fit in, to submit, to explain away, to live in undisturbed community, to share in a
social collective both joy and sorrow, both help and horror…(its) main effort seems to be to rid a person of
individual freedom and personal responsibility …(it) is an invitation and a path to denial.”vii
MIddlemann contrasts this fatalistic outlook and the philosophy that produces it to the dynamism of
Christianity:
When biblical Christianity took a stand against the cacophony of other religions, it (produced) greater
humanity. Whereas (false) religions drug people into submission…Christianity energizes the mind and body
into creative action. Religions still serve as the opiate of the people and contribute to human, intellectual and
economic poverty in many parts of the world. Belief in the God of the Bible has led to significant – though
never perfect – practices of biblical ethics, human rights, intellectual development and individual and social
responsibilities that have had visible consequences in the material realm…Compared with other cultures,
wherever Jewish and Christian thought has been checked against reality and found to be true, people have
made greater strides in mastering a hostile world and controlling abusive power.viii
Social thinker Dennis Prager says, in referring to Warraq’s assertion of the centrality of Western self-criticism,
“There are major ramifications to this insight. One is where this indispensable aspect of moral and progressing
civilization began. It began in the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Jews in the Torah and in
the rest of the Tanakh are relentlessly criticized by fellow Jews and by the Jewish scriptures… it has been a
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moral compliment of the highest order to Judaism and to Jews that the Jews were the only people to canonize
their critics.” ix
As Christianity was grafted to the roots of God’s redemptive process begun with Israel (Romans 11:17), we
would expect those moral premises to carry over. Middleman concurs:
It is remarkable that only the context of Jewish and Christian thought and tradition has ever given rise to moral
objection where unjust human suffering is perceived, whether concerning its own people or the alien at the
gate.x
To those who would note that such ethical notions were evident in classical Greece, Prager concedes,
“This self-criticism was also present — though not as extensively — among ancient Greek writers. Given that
the origins of Western civilization are said to reside in Athens and Jerusalem, one can fairly infer that the West
was conceived in self-criticism.”
The recognition of Greek social criticism does nothing to dilute the claims of Warraq, al Buleihi or Middlemann.
In fact, the searching reason of the Greek philosophers, in particular Aristotle, was seen by Christian theologians
such as Thomas Aquinas as the product of a type of divine inspiration.
“Aquinas was sympathetic towards and influenced by Aristotle to whom he customarily refers as 'the
philosopher'. In a similar vein to Aristotle, Aquinas formulates a theory of ethics known as natural law. Aquinas
assumes that God created the world, that the world reveals his purpose in creating it and that the fulfillment of
that purpose is the supreme good to be sought: '[Natural law] is the participation of the human person in the
divine law of God.' Elsewhere he declares that natural law is "nothing other than the light of understanding
infused in us by God whereby we see what is to be done and what is not to be done.”xi (my emphasis)
So the source of self-criticism is recognition of an unmet standard, the need to replace the is with the ought.
Aquinas attributed this perception in Aristotle to the phenomenon described by Paul in Romans 1: 18-20,
echoed in Chapter 2:14-15
For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their
unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can plainly be known about God is evident among them,
because God has shown it to them. From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal
power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result,
people are without excuse. (my emphasis)
When outsiders who have never heard of God's law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by
their obedience. They show that God's law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into
the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God's yes and no, right and
wrong. (from the Message)
The basic standard of right and wrong is a common grace for all mankind, Paul says. Without a true motive, men
are able and expected to do works of God’s law, after a fashion. The full biblical law extends that grace, richens
and deepens it. The Apostle Paul goes on to describe the ingrained tendencies against which the self-criticism
demanded by the law of God contends:
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to
think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused.
Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, everliving God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
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So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile
and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they
worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal
praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned
against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead
of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful
things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they
deserved.
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let
them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin,
greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are
backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they
disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no
mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do
them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too:” xii
Sounds like just another day on cable TV. In other words, as Jews and Christians would say – It’s a fallen world!
Paul observes that most people act as if they really believe that they decide for themselves what the “right” thing
is. “We each decide our own reality” and “What’s true for you may not be true for me” are common
contemporary statements, but they have existed in different forms in every human culture for all of history.
This passage strongly implies that if even the unregenerate follow their consciences, they would achieve a level
of flourishing, because that god-given awareness of right and wrong would yield a significant level of personal
and social harmony. Instead, they attribute the gifts of the Creator to themselves and misuse, abuse and
ultimately distort them beyond recognition, bringing grief, viciousness and misery.
Of course, we know the origin of this way of thinking. The biblical story in Genesis 3 describes the first woman
and man faced with the temptation to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that the
Creator God had placed off limits, with the warning that they would die if they partook. The tempter offered a
different outcome if they would rebel against God –“God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (verse 5). For most of us, this would seem like a good thing,
being able to tell good from evil. But the statement doesn’t translate well from the original language – that isn’t
what Satan meant. What Satan meant is “You will be like God by getting to do what God Himself has the
authority to do – to decide what’s good and what is evil!” This is “the Bargain in the Garden” – the ultimate
object of desire for corrupted mankind; a false offer, from one who has no ability to really make it true, the King
of Liars, Satan, who got thrown out of heaven himself for trying to overthrow God (Isaiah 14:9-15, Luke 10:18,
Ephesians 2:12, Revelations 12:7-9)– the very rebellion in which he enlisted humankind. It is the product of an
inflated view of angelic, and human, potential. It leads to what Friedrich von Hayek termed “the Fatal Conceit”.
As a result, in the words of Romans 8:20-23, the “whole creation is groaning”. As Middleman puts it,
“The reason things don’t work right lies in Adam’s rejection of God’s authority and our continuing down the
same path. Now we humans pretend to be God and fail at it, and the universe falls on top of us.”xiii
Scot McKnight uses the term “cracked Eikon,” to refer to the fact that humans are made in the image of God
(Eikon), but as the result of the Fall, we are damaged, corrupted, unable to properly display the image of God. xiv
The great historian Paul Johnson adds to this concept in his essay, “The Necessity for Christianity,”
“The great strength of Christianity is that, while insisting that man is made in the image of God, it accepts that
there is a radical flaw in the reproduction. From time to time, God's image is reflected in man's face as in a
hideous distorting mirror. Theologians call this the doctrine of Original Sin.” (my emphasis)
Mankind is sinful, and sin brings corruption, bad consequences, miseries and produces shortcomings of every
kind. The “default position” of humanity is a zero-sum world – I win/you lose, and I only win if you lose. The
ruthless few have generally feasted at the expense of the powerless many.
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Judeo-Christian ethics successfully challenged this status quo, though in the Judeo-Christian understanding of
the human condition, the best that we can hope for is a mitigation of woe, not its eradication, until the time
when all things will be set right by the Messiah (true from both Jewish and Christian perspectives). Thomas
Sowell, the great politico-economic scholar, has called the admission of this reality and the philosophy of the
people who agree with it – Jews and Christians predominately – the “tragic vision” of the world. This worldview
produced the outlook that embraced and recognized the possibility of progress, but resisted utopian views of
human potential. From a practical standpoint, this viewpoint requires self-criticism. And as sins and
shortcomings are identified, it argues for comparison and contrast of alternative answers to the problem –
something very like the premises of scientific inquiry – and selection of the best available alternative, with hope
but without expectations of perfection. Appropriate criticism of the status quo led to progress, not only in social
justice, but also in science and learning.
Appropriate self-criticism is the key. Against what standard is criticism of a person or a society made? God’s
redemptive campaign provided the ethical prescription for cracked humanity. “The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul”, says the psalmist.xv Every principle for a human-appropriate social ethic is found in the law
of God. As Middleman argues,
The spiritual and intellectual climate that the Bible introduces results in a highly functional view of God and
humans, of work and life, of individuals and society. xvi(my emphasis)
The Law of God was originally given to a homogenous culture (and those it would attract), for the purpose of
declaring God’s glory and justice to the nations – to extend and intensify their recognition of the standard that
they were feeling within, but generally ignoring and not crediting to its Source. The two sides of the blessing of
the law are displayed in these passages from Deuteronomy, declaring the gift and sounding the warning that
ego-driven mankind confuse the origin, and thus pervert and diminish its effects.
See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the LORD my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in
the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and
understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise
and understanding people.” What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD
our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous
decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let
them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them…
Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees
that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and
settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is
multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your Godxvii
The entirety of Deuteronomy is like a “looped tape”, alternately declaring the blessings of adherence to the law
and warning against prideful disobedience. The message is that, like the initial rebellion at the Fall, the
tendency will be to obey for a while, experience the blessings, then imagine that we originated the success
principles and so are free to tinker with them. The biblical message is that this will be part of residual human
nature until “all things are made new”.xviii
The recognition of human fallen-ness and the subsequent requirement for biblically informed self-criticism (the
results of which in the best case, we must remember, is one thing among a homogenous culture and quite
another in a pluralistic culture) are that which produced the slow and not always steady process by which the
solvent of the exceptional Judeo-Christian ethic (exceptional because of its Source) worked its work over the
centuries. Deuteronomy 28 contains these thoughts:
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“If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the LORD
your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings if you
obey the LORD your God:
3
Your towns and your fields will be blessed. 4 Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of
your herds and flocks will be blessed. 5 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. 6 Wherever you go
and whatever you do, you will be blessed… If you listen to these commands of the LORD your God that I am
giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you will
always be on top and never at the bottom. (my emphasis)
Matthew 6:33 contains a related message: seek God’s righteousness and physical blessing will also result. To
the degree that God’s principles for righteousness become part of a culture’s framework, that culture will rise
above others. So it has been for Christendom.
But the intellectual embrace of a skeptical Enlightenment, which forgot the ground in which it grew, has led to
self-criticism that has been perverted into something corrosive. Prager, in the article I referenced earlier,
comments:
What we have today is, therefore, morally lopsided. We have Jews criticizing Jews, Judaism and Israel — often
irresponsibly. We have Americans criticizing America — likewise often irresponsibly. And we have Christians
criticizing Christians and Christianity — again, often irresponsibly.
The history of Christianity is certainly not a study in triumphalism, but of episodic failings that were generally
the subject of intense criticism by Christians themselves. But as the non-Christians quoted earlier fairly
observe, the West, more properly termed Christendom, can claim to have also brought rich blessings to “the
nations.” The critics of Christianity seem unaware that modern Western progressive-liberalism “unfolded
historically in a cultural environment profoundly shaped by Christianity, and thus in a cultural environment in
which much could be taken for granted (e.g., the sacredness of the human person, the existence of an objective
moral order, the intelligibility of reality, etc.). Liberalism, that is to say, worked as well as it did because, in
[Christopher] Dawson's words, it lived "on . . . spiritual capital that it . . . inherited from Christian civilization.” xix
R. R. Reno, discussing the criticisms of this forgetful tendency by French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, states:
Bruckner recognizes, our postmodern age does not seem to view criticism as a way of refining and deepening
our loyalty to the real achievements of Western culture, not the least of which is the freedom to criticize. We
seem to relish denunciation for its own sake.
To which Reno adds his own observation:
As St. Augustine recognized, all societies are deeply implicated in human sinfulness. We may achieve a degree
of justice, but our common life remains haunted by perverted desires. Hyper-critique promises to lift us out of
our fallen condition. We ascend to a place were we imagine that we can see all the evils–and we assume,
falsely, that such a place must be good, and that our residency there makes us good in turn. It is not surprising
that we are tempted by the illusion of purification-by-self-criticism.xx
In such a contextually-detached intellectual culture, any failings of Christians induce a mood of cynicism -even
of hostility- towards Christianity. An oft-repeated message may take root in the wider culture, blinding us to the
rich history of honest self-critique that overcame entrenched cultures of death and despair. As Paul Johnson
reminds us:
there is no person or situation with Christianity, which cannot be rendered worse, and usually far worse,
without it… If Voltaire were alive today, surveying a world from much of which Christianity has been forced to
retreat, and observing the horrors, both physical and ideological, which have rushed to fill the vacuum it has
left, I doubt if he would still maintain that 'religion is the enemy of man'. Would he not, rather, be forced to
conclude that true religion, by which I mean Judeo-Christianity in all its normative forms, is the friend of man,
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that with all its limitations as practiced by fallible humanity, it is the only safety-net which keeps us all from
plunging into the abyss, and joining the beasts which tear and rend each other below? Would he not now
concede, if only in an empirical sense, the necessity of Christianity? I think he would.xxi
i
Kenneth L. Grasso, Christianity, Enlightenment Liberalism, and the Quest for Freedom
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8397
ii
David Neff, “Getting Western Civ Right, Christianity Today, January, 2008 at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/julyweb-only/7-14-51.0.html
iii
www.nationalreview.com/articles/.../how-reform-islam-ibn-warraq
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3264.htm
v Paul Johnson, “The Necessity of Christianity”, http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth08.html
vi see Kirk’s The Roots of American Order, Dawson’s Dynamics of World History, Stark’s The Victory of Reason and For
the Glory of God, Wood’s How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Royal’s The God Who Did Not Fail and
Weigle’s The Cube and the Cathedral
vii Middleman, Udo, Christianity versus the Fatalistic Religions in the War Against Poverty, Colorado Springs:
Paternoster Press, 2007), pp 8-11.
viii Ibid.
ix
http://www.jewishjournal.com/dennis_prager/article/jews_christians_muslims_and_self-criticism_20101006/
x Middleman, p.48
xi
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/cafe/phil_mar2001.htm
xii Romans 1:21-32 NLT
xiii Middleman, p.7
xiv McKnight, Scot, Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005)
xv
Psalm 19:7
xvi Middleman, p.14
xvii Deut 4:5-8, also chap 8:11-14a
xviii Revelation 21
xix Grasso
xx R. R. Reno, “The Pleasures of Self-Hatred,” First Things, August 2010
xxi Johnson
iv
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