The God That Did Not Fail: How
Religion Built and Sustains the West
by Robert Royal
God That Did Not Fail:How Religion Built And Sustains The West.Great Book And
Argument.
Secular humanists and other progressives have been predicting the
demise of religion for the past 250 years. But they keep running into a
problem--those who were supposed to be liberated by secular gospel that
God is Dead arent buying it. Why not? Since the Greeks and Romans, as
Robert Royal explains, religion has nurtured the development of the
individual and of Western culture itself. Christianity and Judaism
collaborated to create a dialogue between faith and reason that
determined the history of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and
Reformation, and several Enlightenments, including our current
postmodern moment. Royal concludes that modern democratic societies
are intimately tied to a Christian view of the dignity of the human person
and the health and survival of free institutions.

Personal Review: The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built
and Sustains the West by Robert Royal
What an interesting book. Royal sets out to prove that the secularists who
argue that religion needs to be erradicated from civilization have it all
wrong. He insists that Christianity created the western mind, with its
unique blend of individualism, science, and democracy. Those who are
secularists today are "currently engaged in a deeply incoherent and, in
multiple ways, dangerous experiment" (xiii).
First off, and against much tradition, Royal states that the west did not
begin in Greece. The Greeks and Romans, just as all eastern
civilizations, believed in anakuklosis, that life followed cycles. In China
and India this belief crippled scientific questions and even prevented
democracy from forming.
The religions and philosophies that grew up in pagan and eastern societies
were deeply pessimistic. "Epicurus understood that many of the vices we
see--lust, greed, ambition, snobbery, violence--are ultimately the product of
the fear of death...in these dimensions Epicurus somewhat resembles the
Buddha. Neither believed in a God or gods who are of much help to the
human race" ( p 42). Life was pointless. Death inevitable.
Against these truths, paganism was a pale set of rituals created to
appease gods who cared little about human beings.
And then came Abraham. He was a nomad, a person of little note in the
world. But this obscure man claims to speak to God, and God "starts him
on a fateful journey that has still not come to an end in its effects...'I have
made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you
exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you....I will establish my
covenant...'" (p 53). And, surprise, some 4,000 years after Abraham
about 55% of the world's population claim to believe in Abraham and his
God.
Abraham's God is a God of love, unlike Zeus. With the advent of
Christianity, society would be changed forever. Most important was the
belief that every person had an immortal soul. Christians argued against
abortion and infant exposure. They forbade believers to watch the games
or the theaters, where human beings were frequently put to death.
Christian beliefs would lead ineluctably to the conclusion that Caesar was
no god; and a slave was his equal in the eyes of the true God. Christians
were famous for facing death calmly when standing in the arena. Unlike
the spectators, they knew that death was not an end, but a beginning.
Ancient society, except for the Jews, had no idea of charity. But soon
after the advent of Christianity, "Galen was puzzled by the power of
Christianity to create virtuous behavior among the uneducated" (p 86).
Galen, the famous physician, fled the city as soon as the plague started.

He was never criticized for it. Christians, to the amazement of the
pagans, risked their own lives to help others.
By 380 AD Christianity was the majority religion. After the fall of the
Roman empire, monasteries kept Latin and learning alive. Theology
would also prove to be a huge benefit for Christians. If there was an
ultimate truth, and God was rational, then it was incumbent upon man to
figure out what was right. Very different from the mindset in the east,
where only compromise, not ultimate truth, is sought.
The founder of the Sorbonne university said, "'Nothing is known perfectly
which has not been masticated by the teeth of disputation'" (p 132). This
was the core of medieval thought. The great universities grew, science
developed, and the Renaissance blossomed.
Much recommended.
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