Early Christians did not share everything in common (except in rare cases). But capitalism could be said to be incompatible with Christianity.
Jesus casting the money lenders from the temple had a great effect on Medieval capitalism, in that only Jews were able to lend money.
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice refers to this.
But whilst Xianity might not allow stocks shares and other forms of gambling and money lending/making; it certainly is easy enough to use to justify Feudalism though. God is all about hierarchy.
In practice, like most religious people, they tend to pick what they like, and ignore the rest. The Bible is good at this as it has so many contradictions, being written by committee.
Early Christians did not share everything in common (except in rare cases). But capitalism could be said to be incompatible with Christianity.
Jesus casting the money lenders from the temple had a great effect on Medieval capitalism, in that only Jews were able to lend money.
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice refers to this.
But whilst Xianity might not allow stocks shares and other forms of gambling and money lending/making; it certainly is easy enough to use to justify Feudalism though. God is all about hierarchy.
In practice, like most religious people, they tend to pick what they like, and ignore the rest. The Bible is good at this as it has so many contradictions, being written by committee.
I am German. More so than you’ll ever be, because I don’t betray our people by telling lies about our history.
I picked a random German City:
The economic influences were not Christian, other than the diocese for a while collected taxes. Pagans had a basic river trade (nothing at all particularly German about that, every society bordering rivers do this. Its not “Occidental” anymore than pottery, horseback riding or bows and arrows).
The town was free, walled itself off, was exploited for taxation, Jews ran the financial transactions.
Like I said in the above posts.
I’ll start listing other German Cities too if you need me to.
We have things to be proud of as a people. Needing to lie about our past isn’t a virtue, its a hindrance to seeing how we lives, to exploring our past to see what our triumphs actually were. Your approach to our history is disreputable, and shames us as a collective identity.
Christianity was very adaptive to economics over the eras it has existed, we were never static. We were theorists in it at times, great pioneers of it, but also tried to turn our backs on it from time to time as well. Why? Because we are a highly dynamic religion, spread over diverse populations and peoples, in many different eras. We morph and change.
Even the trinitarian emphasis of oecomonia doesn’t cover the miaphysites approach to management and economics. We had a large array of church fathers and scholars in any era to point to for doctrinal legitimacy, and they didn’t always agree on emphasis or approach. Why? Because economics and even collectivism isn’t the central, core concern of Christianity. The relationship of the Individual to God and Community is, through actions and conscious knowing.
Not everyone was expected to live communally, without poverty or possessions even around Jesus. He had property bearing followers. There were property owning communities following the Didache well into the 3rd century along the Persian-Roman border. We know from Archeological excavations in Syria and Iraq (ruins currently being destroyed by ISIS).
Explaining factual history is not racism, and accusing your social better, a German himself, of being a Racist is silly. However, you insisting on this board, preaching banal histories and misleading others with a narrow minded, master race mentality is.
It is not 100% correct, but Turd’s “interpretations” are even not 20% correct. They are based on lies, on bias, on hate, on racism, on resentment, and on lies again. He is fighting a fight against history, against Germans as if he had just declared WW3 on Germany. That has nothing to do with this thread.
Do not believe in agitators. They chosse some historical facts (for example: 20%) out of the historical context and glue them and their ideology together. That is not how scientific history works.
In all my posts here in this thread I was referring to all historical facts that are necessary in order to answer the question in the opening post of this thread. It has been proven that the economy of the Occident (the Christian Occident is meant!) can only be based on both Germanic peoples and Christianity, namely Roman Catholic and later also Protestantic Christianity. Belisar (Turd was talking about) had nothing to do with it, because he was a Byzantine, an Orthodox Christian, thus a man of the Orient (East Europe and West Asia). This was how the Europeans divided the world at that time as well as later and how they divide it today too: West and East. (And by the way: I am not against people of the East - the mother of my daughter is Greek, and my current wife has lived in Greece for 12 years).
Turd (Contra-Nietzsche) is an US American. He himself told me last year. Do not believe in his lies. He is telling lies over lies. And he is confusing this lies with cynism. That is rediculous.
Is robbery also a form of economy?
1,1) Is robbery also a form of capitalism?
Has Christianity anything to do with economy and capitalism?
If yes:
2,1) Is the Catholic formula “ORA ET LABORA” important for economy?
2,1,1) Is the Catholic formula “ORA ET LABORA” important for capitalism?
2,2) Is the ethics of Protestantic performance / achievement important for economy?
2,2,1) Is the ethics of Protestantic performance / achievement important for capitalism?
Is economy avoidable?
If yes:
3,1) Is economy avoidable by Christianity?
Is capitalism avoidable?
If yes:
4,1) Is capitalism avoidable by Christianity?
Belisarius was a Latin speaking Roman from Illyricum, and was most definitely Catholic. He even got to choose who was going to be Pope in Rome.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches wouldn’t split for centuries till after this.
Your dogging the issue, and ate inventing history independent of the facts. And the Orthodox Christians are still Christians, even the Vatican recognizes this. Catholic Byzantine Rite Christians are nearly identical to Greek Orthodox, just under the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church recognizes Greek and Russian Bishops as legitimate Apostolic Bishops.
Is there differences? Yes, but not any listed in your analysis. Germans had a minor influence even in the middle ages on Christianity. A few great minds, fully worthy of respect (you don’t mention them), but not really different from say, the Chaldeans in Iraq. Actually, some of it was directly inspired from Iraqi Christiam influences in the middle ages.
Your not correct. Period. You will never win on this, cause your presenting a false argument. I will invite other historians onto this forum to rip you further if necessary. You don’t get to lie about this stuff.
Christians from even the earliest of times, I’m talking 1st Century, could own slaves and property. There was a communal expectation, but it wasn’t property, but rather of the injustice of mistreating one another, as all were servants to God, and brothers to one another. Christianity didn’t seek to contest the status quo, but rather, how men related to one another humanely and spiritually.
For example, overly taxing people was wrong, but taxes in and if itself wasn’t. Why? You could ruin people from tax farming in excess, when you as the tax collector are doing it for greed. But Christianity never contested the idea of taxation, just there were more important priorities.
You find this pattern popping up. Our early religion was inline with the Cynics in many ways on rejecting wealth, but when it was encountered, it was dealt with pragmatically, with expectations to properly invest it and administer it towards Christian aimed. This should be rather obvious, were still around. If we were really as bad as George Carlan joked about (and his jokes were funny, have a sense of humor people) in God always needing more money, we would of went bust in the first century, and we never would of built churches, much less afford to expand. We’ve always had wealthy members, and in the era before Cinstatibe the Great, attracted even Emperors. The nobility were allowed to enter. Alexander Severus, Phillip the Arab. The people wealthy enough to be able to afford sacrifices in the Caesar’s temples, and refusing… being Martyred, obviously had wealth. Doesn’t make sense to kick a starving hobo in the street and demand sacrifice… if he had a anamal to sacrifice, he would eat it himself.
Likewise, we never built communal housing for our communities I’m aware of. I follow archeology in the roman era very carefully, and look over the reports for all over Europe, I have yet to see North Korean style communes pop up. We more or less adopted the pattern of living that is local. Only place I’m aware of distinct Christian grottoes would be persian, and possibly under the Jewish Khazar empire in the middle ages, but can’t get any reliable archeological data. I don’t just research christian history, I research all history up till the 1700s (not logical to stop there, I just do).
Reason why Christianity so smoothlessly entered into Feudalism was:
We fully accepted and adopted Emperor Augustus’ Marriage Reforms. He instituted it as a awareness that the “Romaness” of the Romans was quickly dissapearing in a sea of conquered foreigners, the upper classes were having orgies on a regular basis, and very few in the Senate could be certain they were actually the fathers of their wives offspring. This was done to stabilize the Roman Nobility, and to make it easier to assert Roman colonies with actual Romans in the colonies. It had a strong root one can only look towards Arius Didymus for. Christians adopted this wholesale. We accepted the validity of Pagan marriages when they converted, but were expected to fall inline with Roman, not Jewish practices of Polygamy.
This kind of marriage adapted to the Roman cliental system, of noble, rich classes supporting the lower classes, and the lower classes backing them in their squabbles. This pattern echoes back to the republican era. Christianity in its early days focused more on recruiting ANYONE, but was mostly successful with the lower classes (as most people came from there), but as time went buy, we focused more on higher class nobles. Reasons are obvious as this recent psychological study suggests:
Optimism in testing a variety of systems arise when comfort/wealth systems hit a certain comfort threshold. People living in Spartan environments don’t experiment as much, even when options for expansion are available.
The underlining success of Christianity in its communion and feasting, juxtapositioned with fasting and community awareness needs to be carefully analysed in this light. There is likely some very concrete psychological insights to our methods.
Compare the early Christian communal feasts with the Feast in the Satyricon, where death and wealth was on parade in Pompey, celebrated in a demented Nietzschean manner, but luxury and shitting were equated. Christianity took the opposite stance.
Both kinds of feasting survive, but which attracts in the long run the worst hipocrits? Which one can you build a community in the long run off if? In one case, in the Satyricon, its nothing but parasites looking to gain favor from his will and immediate enjoyment, in Christianity, its coming together as far as your means can allow, supporting one another not just socially in a Marxist narrow minded sense but as equal in friendship and spirituallyz with a serious concern for their well being, but all engaged in a higher cause.
This is why there isn’t anything inherently “Germanic” about Christianity, or that the Germans made the Christian west, in some Germanic Nietzschean-Nazus fevor, the religion wasn’t built on racism or nationalism. It wasn’t built on indiscriminant socialism either. It focused on the needs and morality of the man neglected, tormented, and made something better.
Did Christianity support slavery? No. You can’t enslave a freeman and claim to still be Christian, as the very act is rather appalling by Christian standards.
Can you build a financial empire and still be Christian?
No on three assumptions:
Your wealth isn’t profiting anyone but you, merely being hoarded (not being invested into others, being put to work).
There are deeply impoverished people all around while your hoarding it.
Your wealth comes from debt that has broken and unreasonably distressed others, ruining them.
If you can be wealthy in a wealthy land, where all are taken care of, so be it, you won’t find a lot of complains other than the necessity to give to more impoverished regions, either via the church or via direct investment or business start ups, something. Don’t just hide out in Luxembourg and shrug your shoulders when you know people are starving elsewhere.
But we always had a concept of property. But we always had a contrast with the need for encouraging thinking beyond wealth, embracing poverty and working for the people. We emphasized living by educated, noble norms, tended to convert nobles early on, etc. We balanced the contrasts. We could be very complex even within small geographical regions. Its meant to be a universal religion, emphasizing introspective and communal awareness. Its not a socialist utopia though, outside the idealized heaven. There has been as many interpretations of heaven as there have been of hell, and many have taken conflicting stances of it. I’m not in a position to analyse it (as I’m not a theologian) and won’t dare claim its whatever we want it to be, and we all get it in the end. Its fairly apparent from the drift of the religion in general that is most certainly not the case. I only know that we weren’t as firm communal socialists as some make us out to be, and had we been better Christians certain practices, like extreme personak wealth building and slavery should of died out in our lands much sooner. It bothers me how a philosopher like Michael Psellos could still have a slave in the 11th century.
(Michael Psellos is definitely “Occidental”, a western philosopher, who’s roots were Graeco-Roman, living in a Roman Capital, looking down on more primitive and backwards Germans living in tiny, distant communities to the North West. Germany’s largest cities were measured in a few thousand residents, Constantinople over a million. Its absolutely demented to think Christianity was a German grown phenomena, or that the Franks were the crucial force to define it! It had eight centuries of experience before this, and several cultures competing along side the Franks or the Holy Roman Empire (which Volitare noted was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.)
Feudalism was a very complex system, but shot itself in the foot. Its militarism and heavy focus on inheriting property through proper lineages resulted in incest and technological stagnation. Its about as irresponsible as Socialism. But both of them are still far more advanced than some alternatives out there.
The rest fit into Christianity. Slavery was a accepted practice at the time of Jesus. He didn’t complain about it. Nothing wrong with child labor. The idea that children should not be working is a modern Western idea. Monopolies are not wrong in themselves - how they conduct themselves may be problematic. In fact, Christianity has a problem with the abuse and exploitation of slaves and children rather than the system of slavery or systematic child labor.
If we are all brothers, none should be slaves. Correct on your last statement. But many in the South, during the civil war, protested against the Northern idea of freedom of slaves by stating that they, the Southerners, treated their slaves humanely. It was not always “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
There is nothing Christian or Unchristian about particular political or economic systems or organizations. It’s how people treat each other within the system/society that can be considered in sync or out of sync with Christian teachings.
Even the Roman empire had its German Caesar, for example one of the Franks. More and more Germans became high military generals in the Roman army. The reason for all of this was the fact that the Romans had had no or too less offspring and to let more and more Germans into the empire - additionally there had been to German provinces in the Roman Emipre since Ceasar: Germania Inferior and Germania Superior. This Germans became either Romans or remained Germans. So the whole thing in the Roman empire during its last 5 centuries was the fact that the Romans had not enough children anymore - beacuse of wealth. It was the same problem the Europeans have today. (It was also a reason why I referred to this time when responding to Ierrellus’ opening post of this thread.) After Rome was conquered by the Germans there was no single territory - except in East Europe which was a steppe and Byzantium, although it had also many German inhabitants. There was a treaty between them. This all is well documented, also the fact that Augustus tried to prevent by law (LEX JULIA, 14 B.C.) that the Romans in his empire died out. After Rome was conquered there was no single place in Europe that was not ruled by Germans. Shall I name all the German kings of the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the whole Europe? That would be a very long list. Go and google it, pupil. You have not the tiniest idea of history. Read your science fiction books, watch Hollywood popaganda, and dream on, Turd. During the whole Middle Ages the Holy Roman empire of German Nation was the main power. One can say that the whole Occidental culture is a German culture. The nations as we know them today were formed later when the main power changed more and more to the side of the sea power, and the German Hanse was also a great sea power. Sir Francis Drake was a robber, but he was also ennobled by the queen of England. Why? … So we have to ask whether robbery is also a great business and a form of economy.
These are facts, reagardless whether a Turd accepts them or not.
The Roman empire was not conquerd by your Niegrian friends, Turd. If you want to change the history, then you must be more powerful than you are, little warrior. You are not God. And the Africans have no possibility of producing like other people have. Ask yourself why that is also a fact. The US Americans have been having the most responsibility in the world since 1945. So you have a huge duty but do not care about it. You want but you do not need to fight against history. Search for another enemy but let the history alone, Turd.
In a country in which one out of five children go hungry and veterans are homeless there is much to be accounted for if one believes “What you have done to the least of these. …”
But you seem to be saying that there is some system which solves these problems and it is no longer the personal responsibility of a Christian to solve these problems.
That would be a system which prevents greed, or thoughtlessness, or insensitivity …
