the religious legitimation of secular society

 

Contents:          Early Christianity, 116        

Medieval Society, 121        

The Differentiation of the European System, 125    

Renaissance and Reformation, 129     

Conclusion, 133

 

The development of cultural innovation in the seed-bed societies of ancient Israel and Greece depended on conditions under which cultural advances could develop and become dissociated from their societal origins.  These two models  were chosen because of their contributions to later social evolution.  Elements derived from classical Hebrew and Greek sources, after undergoing further development, are cultural components of modern society.  There focus was Christianity.  As a cultural system, Christianity proved able to absorb components of the secular culture of antiquity and to form a matrix from which a new order of secular culture could be differentiated.  Christian culture – including its secular components – was able to maintain more consistent differentiation from the societies with which its was interdependent than either of its forebears.  Because of such differentiation from society, Christian culture came to serve as a more effective innovative force in the development of the socio-cultural system than had any other cultural complex that had yet evolved.

 

A cultural system does not institutionalize itself; it most be integrated with a social environment than can fulfill the functional requirements for a viable society.  Evolution involves continuing interaction between the cultural and social systems, as well as among their respective components and subsystems.  Social prerequisites of cultural effectiveness not only change but also may at any given stage depend upon previous stages of the institutionalization of cultural elements.  In this perspective, the Roman Empire takes on a dual significance.  It consitituted the social environment in which Christianity developed. 

 

116  THE RELIGIOUS LEGITIMATION OF SECULAR SOCIETY           

 

Because Roman society owed a debt to Greek civilization, Greek influence entered the modern system not only culturally, through Christian theology and the secular culture of the Renaissance, but also through the role structure of Roman society, especially in the East where the educated classes remained Hellenized after conquest by Rome.  Second, the heritage of Roman institutions was incorporated into the foundations of the modern world.  Greek influence and the Roman institutional heritage were significant for the same structures: The legal order of the Empire, a necessary condition of Christian proselytization, reflected elements of Roman law in the canon law of the Church and in the secular law of medieval Society and its successors.

 

            I shall begin with the two social bridges between the ancient and modern world: Christianity and certain institutions of the Roman Empire.  Then I shall skip a number of centuries to the immediate back-ground of modern society: feudal society and its culmination in the high Middle Ages.  Finally, I shall discuss the Renaissance and the Reformation. 

 

continued

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