To say that something comes from original sin is a truism (for the branches of Christianity who believe in this doctrine). Original sin along with free will is part of many Christians understanding of the presence of evil.
Original sin means that we don’t live the paradise that existed before the fall. It does not mean we don’t actively deal with consequences. Your source number 3 deals with this. Even when people were thinking up Utopia societies they did that with the understanding that there would be plague and sickness,(aspects of the fall) they could not think past it. Instead they were looking for ways to deal with these expected realities.
This is my answer for all your sources that deal specifically with original sin.
Most of your quotes are talking about specific sins. As I addressed earlier, yes you need to repent but that does not mean we don’t look for answers to our problems. I feel like this idea is clear in the Bible but it is made even more clear and even turned into a theological imperative by St. Thomas Aquinus. I explain in more detail later.
Let’s be clear though not everyone was focused on Gods wrath as the cause of this plague. I think it is interesting that materials from the time show that those who disbelieved in the concept of divine punishment tended to believe that it was caused by “the stars”. You can find this in the conclusions of the Paris Consilium and the writings of
Francesco Petrarca and in the Decameron by Boccaccio.
But theses sources merely confirm a simple logical connection. If one truly believes that a Divine Being was the cause of the problem then divine acts would be the best solution. I sure 1000s of people looked at secular reasons but millions were looking for a divine solution thus closing their minds from secular solutions.
Do you have any logical arguments as to why people would seek other solutions when they thought the disease had a divine purpose?
Just because the disease has a religious purpose does not mean people are not thinking of what to do about the disease. Your source number three talks about how thinkers who believe that plague was caused by God were thinking of ways to control disease (cleaner cities, more hospitals, actually staffed with doctors) . They do not seem to have been constrained by thinking that this was caused by God. I have already shown Bible verses where people are expected to take actions beside religious actions when they are faced by problems even those caused by God.
Another example is language. Genesis teaches that human languages formed as a punishment from God. By your logic medieval people would have abstained from learning foreign languages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Church was teaching its monks Latin, Greek, Hebrew and even translating documents out of less obvious languages like Arabic.
I have already tried to explain to you the basic reasoning behind this. The will of God may well be the Ultimate cause but that does not mean that there are not proximal cause that a person can investigate. (Even more according to the thinking of Aquinas a Christian is obligated to look for physical revelations.)
Before the first wave of the bubonic plague science was bad among the various European tribes just after the fall of Rome and the area was in state of constant warfare. However, this science was getting better. The Catholic Church had preserved Roman reading and writing, a skill not known to the still primitive European tribes, and was translating copying and using Greek and Roman theories, histories and other texts.
There had also been theological redevelopments as well. St. Thomas Aquinas had not only come to a Christian understanding of Greek and Roman science but he had destroyed any tension between science and Christianity at the time. He taught that all reason and understanding was from God and that we were to seek to learn through our experiences. Some things could be known only by a spiritual revelation and others through human reasoning and some both. Since Aquinas many Christians have considered exploring the spiritual world an act of worship.
When I was in college I went to church with a scientist who felt his studies with refracting light was a form of worship of the God who created light.
It is hard to conceive of a scenario in which suppressing religion would do much more than spread hopelessness or cause wild hedonistic decadence. In this time of unstable politics and general ignorance following the fall of Rome the Church was the only ones doing anything to help.
- The hospitals that did exist were run by the church they were not meant to provide health care so much as to nurse people who could not take care of themselves.
- Even if people had access to medicine it was based on mistaken Greek science and would not have helped.
- Those who questioned church teaching were focused on astrological explanations
- The Catholic church was pushing the idea of contagion and quarantine which until the discovery of the flee connection at the turn of the 20th century or the development of penicillin in 1928 was the most scientifically sound solution available.
Were there any secular solutions that might have helped?
I don’t think so. Medieval Europe was in love with Galen, a very secular Greek scientist. While he did some beautiful anatomy and was the best of his time understanding the human body, his theory of medicine was in error. He believed that the body was ruled by fluids called humors. He also believed that weather and bad air (bad smells, the breath of the sick) affected the amounts of these fluids in the body. All sickness was believed to come imbalances of these fluids and bleeding was a common cure. The people of Europe took Roman science as better than their own and it was not until after the plague that they were willing to challenge it. I suppose you could blame the religious people of the day for preserving the writings of Galen and Hippocrates because if they had no done this these works could not have become dependent upon them.
However, I don’t know that Galen’s mistakes mattered too much after all most people could not afford to see a doctor.
“…ignoring the principles found in the book of Amos “
I agree. Cleanness is promoted in the Bible but stories about God’s use of plagues and other natural disasters as a punishment are much more prevalent.(3) If the Bible is the word of God, in which his wisdom on how to live is passed to us, then I would expect verses that clearly reflect this. Such as, animals that reduce the numbers of vermin like cats are good. That transporting rodents and other animals to other lands is a bad. Boiling water before drinking it is a good. This was simply not the case. (11, 12) If these statements like these were preached by the Church would have almost certainly confined the disease to local areas.
Ok, This is my fault I should have realized that you would not know what they book of Amos was about. Amos is about God destroying a complete social order because the entire wealth of the society was used to carter to the petty desires of the rich even as the poor were suffering. {cliff notes from a secular reading of Amos as literature}.
I think the poor diets of the peasant people were a major factor in spreading the plague. Also a factor was the poor sanitary condition that the people lived in. These people had the sanitary passages of the Old Testament and the teachings of Galen, filth was the practice but the upper classes were not ignorant to its effects. They knew that filth caused disease they were indifferent to the sufferings of the poor who were crammed in to filthy corners of the city and pathetically nursed in unfunded charity hospitals.
While the rich were mostly preoccupied with fashion and took advantage of the poor and the Catholic Church more focused on regional politics than Christianity.
“The Trusting are tricked by the conning of traders; fraud and avarice go hand in hand like sisters; the poor suffer through the depravity of the rich. [Contemporary quote from ‘sins of the times‘ in {The Black Death by Rosemerry Horrex} p136 }.
So when the plague struck it made since to believe that was what happened. This is still of the position of the Orthodox church today (your source). While I doubt it was a direct intervention of God but it does seem like the whole thing could have been prevented by following the principles in the Bible both those of cleanness and those of social responsibility.
Your idea of punishment being more prevalent in the Bible than plagues than are natural plagues misses the point of much of the laws, those laws were there as a protection to the people allowing the natural causes of actions to take course is frequently is the punishment.
I think your point about the rats is silly. Even today ships pass on rats and it is not as if the people of the middle ages did not attempt to control the rat population, they hated rats which destroyed grain. Even during the Bubonic Plague epidemic in San Francisco at the turn of the century the Rats of believed to have entered the city from the ships.
The only useful health measure you brought up not in the bible is the boiling of water and it would not have been very helpful against bubonic plague.
”We agree that rats were the major transmitter. But I think it is important to remember that the disease is airborne and direct contact contagious as well. “
I agree, Air borne disease did infect local populations but it was rats that caused the disease to spread to far away lands.
”3. This closed off millions upon millions of minds from the actual causes of the plague and the appropriate actions needed to stop the spread of the disease.
This is the meat of the argument. But I don’t have any reason to believe that people were not perusing every possible answer to this disease.”
I do agree. During the later outbreaks a majority of people in European nations started investigating secular reasons for the disease.
I disagree the investigations of causes began right away . In 1348 King Philip demands an investigation in to the cause of the plague. The greatest education minds of France in the Paris Consilium come to the conclusion that the alignment of plants was the cause of the plague.
While secular in the respect of not being based on common religion the science of the best non-religious scholars of Europe was hardly scientific. However the Catholics could not be blamed they were highly suspicious of astrology which had its base in pagan mythologies.
You might question how King Philip found these astrologers if the Church distrusted astronomy. While the teachings of the Catholic Church were powerful local leaders pretty much did what they wanted. Kings of both Germany and France on a few occasions even captured Popes who disagreed with them .
Hence my reference to the picture of the plague cloaks, I know it wasn’t that effective but this showed progress. During the 14 century the main focus was on prayer and repentance as my previous stated sources shows. I am sure you will be able to find references to secular causes during the 14th century but they were in the minority. Do you have any references that shows secular investigation was a main method of investigation?
I don’t see how later progress would be a sign that religion was the stifling factor. It is notable that your monk in a plague cloak is still following the advice of Galen in protecting himself against “the bad air” given off by sickness. This is not a change in how they thought about disease just in how they protected themselves. But of course there is something to be said for covering one’s mouth. But religion had nothing to do with it.
”5. Even if things were handed better later, I don’t know what this would have to do with religious belief. I also don’t know what the plague in other locations has to do with religion either.”
The Middle East, China and Europe suffered from the plague but only Europe was hit by wide spread reoccurrences of the disease.
Why didn’t the Europeans have the knowledge to combat the disease?
Why did wide spread re-occurrences only happen in Europe?
These later outbreaks shows that Europeans still did not know what to do in case of plagues. But finally only after the “age of enlightenment” did a large scale investigation of secular reason behind the plague occurred, this is when real solution were discovered.
I don’t believe their faith completely cut the Europeans off from finding secular solutions but it most certainly slowed down their progress. Millions of people went to the grave thinking their death was caused by a lack of repentance for their sins.
Here is my problem with this. All the world was religious not just Europe.
I also find it likely that the Chinese and other Asians had the disease endemically like the Europeans had small pox when they brought it to the Americas. We know that the natural foci of Yersinia pestis is in the Deserts of Central Asia.
Plague is a city growth disease. We also know that Yersinia pestis is cold sensitive, this is why Europeans outbreaks have been linked to the Medieval warm. (yes there is some disagreement to the Medieval warm theory) Basically, it says Europe (which is cold) received a free ride from the Yersinia pestis outbreaks for most of it’s history. Then when the Medieval warm coincided with city growth in a corrupt (indifferent to the poor) culture they got hit especially hard.
Many believe North Africa suffered from the Plague and so did Rome. But these are more equatorial locations and they were not wiped out the way Europe was just as Europe was never wiped out by small pox the way the Native Americans were.
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