Christ, Science and Conquest

            Christian notions of knowledge and power eventually evolved into the scientific and institutional systems of knowledge and power that we know today. Already in  the Platonic theories of Augustine, (354?-430 C.E) one can discern aspects of the basic pattern of knowledge/power that still operates in our world. Augustine writes that " [God] is the bestower of all power", and all legitimate authority stems "from Christ, for I find none more powerful". [1] Since God/Christ is the ultimate power, Augustine concludes that the "intellectual cognizance of eternal things belongs to wisdom, but the rational cognizance of temporal things belongs to knowledge", [2] One can already see here the beginnings of a hierarchy and an empire of knowledge and power based on the supremacy of the intellect. The abstract intellect is assumed to have power over all things. What results from the Augustinian view is that god, and the institution that represents god, is not only all powerful, but also represents the ultimate knowledge that is above the knowledge of reason.  "True, solid and sovereign authority is that which is called divine".  Power, divinity and intellect are here nearly synonymous terms. The basis of the knowledge/power of the church is "the authority of the mysteries", that is, of the Eucharistic rite and the sacraments and this authority, "is the lot of the very few" .[3] The very few who represent god have the right to punish those who do not possess knowledge of god.

             In other words, Augustine has defined very well the relation of knowledge/power to the intellect and to institutional authority.  Augustine used these justifications for the power and knowledge of the church to commit atrocities. He advised and oversaw the murder of whole towns of 'Donatists', and 'Pelagians',  so called 'heretical sects' in North Africa that did not think as Augustine did.  "He who is not with me is against me", Christ had said, [4] He said that "he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned"[5] In some respects these sentences define what would become Christian 'holy' war and the Inquisition. Like Christ, Augustine saw enemies in those who thought differently than he. And since Christ had promised damnation for those who think differently, killing heretics was not a problem for Augustine.

             Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) more or less reiterates a similar ideology, though somewhat mitigated by the influence of Aristotelian rationalism on Aquinas' thought.  Aquinas defines knowledge/power in the following terms: "there is a universal and a particular government. [6] The former is God's government whose rule embraces all things...the latter is found in man and is much like the divine government".  and therefore "reason is to man what God is to the world",  Aquinas concludes that, "man has been appointed to this position in place of God"[7]  In other words, the human intellect/reason represents god on earth, and the intellect gives power over men and over earth.  It should not be difficult to see how the science of our society evolved out of these conceptions, once these conceptions are stripped of their mythological and anthropomorphic dressing.  Knowledge is power, science gives knowledge, those who profit from science therefore have the right to punish those who do not have science.

             Systems of knowledge/power are systems that create standards that alternatively benefit and legitimize some while exacting punishments and deprivations on those who do not conform or are outside the norms and standards of legitimacy. The Augustinian and Aquinian conception of knowledge/power define the economy of benefits/deprivations that ruled over Christian society for nearly two millennia. The economy of Christian benefits/deprivations is simply expressed as a series of alternatives: saved/damned, resurrection/crucifixion or heaven/hell. The success of this system of knowledge/power depends upon the conversion of as many as possible to Christ, who represents the locus of a symbolic attainment of total knowledge and power against which everything else is judged. 

            The relation of the desire for transcendence, in gnostic and totalist systems of knowledge, to cruelty, terror, bodily dismemberment and atrocity is both direct and subtle. The devotee of knowledge wants to transfigure reality to be in accord with the Symbol or the system he loves. Remaking reality in the image of the monistic god or the dictatorship of the state requires that those who do not conform be destroyed. This purpose is especially well served when the individual consciously and willingly destroys him or herself to bear witness to the transcendent symbol or science: selfless service serves a "higher" identity and a greater will to power. Christ, Socrates and Al Hallaj are good examples of this; they established the pattern of martyrdom in the West, and are the principle advertisements of Western supremacy as well as Icons that justify and excuse the disasters the West has wrought.[8]

            The apocalyptic idea is the theory of the historical development of the total Christian society, whose ultimate goal is to assimilate all those who conform to the system,  to the symbol of Christ, who represents total power. Those who do not conform must be sacrificed as infidels, heathens or Jews, who were the 'Christ killers'. The world must be destroyed to justify the "truth" of those that believe in the apocalyptic and otherworldly Jesus. "Truth" here forms a complement with destruction, just as for Himmler, righteousness meant murdering Jews. To put this differently, Christ means "life", and his life means death for those who deny him. Likewise with Himmler, the increase of the power and truth of Hitler as messiah depended on the murderer of the Jews and other outsiders. In all these cases, the system of knowledge acts as a filter or screen which filters benefits to those who conform and gather power in accord with legitimate knowledge, while those who do not conform are sanctioned or punished,

            The conquest of the world for god, gold and science were not, in the time of Columbus and Newton, separate motivations. The violently anti-natural tendencies of Christianity, exampled in the mortifications of the desert ascetics, the Flagellants or the paintings of  the Byzantines, Bosch and El Greco, are complemented by the equally violent need to convert and proselytize to the ends of the earth.  The symbolic negation of the world that motivated the Christian ascetics easily became an actual negation of the world for the adventurers of the Conquest and the 'age of discovery'.

            There is a seeming paradox or contradiction here. The Christian view of nature as a place of sin  might seem to conflict with the desire to scientifically know and dominate nature because it was created by god. But there is no conflict here historically. The duplicity of hating  nature as a place of original sin at the same time  as one believes that science will uncover all of nature's secrets is not the contradiction it seems to be.  It was a standard of Christian metaphysics, that knowledge of 'creation' was a token of knowledge of the 'Creator'.  The Creator was the symbol of all powerfulness, and knowledge of creation was a means to partake of this power. The motive of dominating 'inferior' nature extends itself into the belief that one has discovered god's ultimate secrets and therefore has the right to possess or reflect his power. The god symbolism, of course, is merely a sublimation of human motivations. Dominion over nature and the world grants the right to cut it open and exploit it. Total knowledge wants total power.  Discovery, inquiry, the rise of science and exploitive drives and the need of conquest all seem to derive from the same cultural roots in European history.

            The Christ symbol dictates that Christ is more real than the world, and the world is of lesser status and expendable. Christianity and the science that developed out of Christianity are systems of knowledge at war with the world. For Christians the world is Christ, who must be crucified if Christian unity and redemption are to occur. The brutalization of the flesh is required for the transcendent glorification to occur. The brutalization of the flesh becomes a central Christian metaphor for the conquest of the world. The image of Christ as World-King and warrior of righteousness becomes the example of Christian conquest of the world through missionary zeal, colonization, nationalistic fervor and global expansion. Science merely secularizes the drive to transcendent knowledge through the domination of nature and man.

            Dante 's Divine Comedy is a good illustration of the mechanics of knowledge/power I an discussing here.  His paradise represents the benefits of the reigning knowledge system,  Purgatory is a  'neutral' place where, interestingly, he puts Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle.  Hell  represents  those who fall  afoul of the system of knowledge and so must suffer the punishing aspect of its power.  At the bottom of hell are those who betrayed Christ and Cesear. The greatest sin is to oppose religion and the state, Dante tells us, quite in line with the then develping Ingusition and its vioent support of the absolute power of the Monarch. The detailed sadism of hell, in Dante’s Inferno, very likely the most sadistic literary description in all world literature, is in direct proportion to the transcendent excess of  the hierarchical centralization of the Paradiso. Indeed, the glory of paradise appears to be a causal factor in the excess of sadistic enjoyment of blood and torture that Dante exhibits in the Inferno. Hell is for millions, and the centralized, monarchist, hierarchy of heaven is for an elite few. 

            The function of purgatory is as a 'neutral' pivot between the two extremes of an absurdly geometric and glorious heaven and the equally excessive atrocities of hell.  Dante has systematized knowledge and power into an allegorical metaphor. Knowledge/power is an economy of benefits and punishments and requires neutral territory to separate the differences.  Dante puts Aristotle and Socrates in Limbo, which acts as a kind of special Purgatory, as it were, reserved for the elite. Aristotle and Socrates are the prototypical scientists. In Christian society neutrality was expressed in the Greek idea of "apatheia" or disinterested purity. The idea of apatheia was to be 'divinely indifferent' to the world and to sin and suffering. The modern concept of scientific disinterestedness derives from Christian notions of indifference and detachment from the world.  Paul had said, "I can of my own self do nothing", --it had to be a transcendent truth that dictated what he did, while human actuality, the human subject, ordinary people are denigrated to inferior status. Paul, like the scientist, denies himself in order to serve and obtain the status of a higher power. Only the higher principles and abstract 'truth" matters. The pose of humility, like the pose of neutrality, is false. The denial of the subject or the person for the ideal, idea, god or principle is the essence of neutrality. The ideal of neutrality derives from god concept. In our society science derives from and serves a similar function to the god concept;  arbitrating between benefits for some and punishments for others. Dante's allegory is a literary symbolization of what would occur soon after his death. Hell for millions, and centralized hierarchy for an elite few; in the middle is a neutral zone where knowledge dwells, neither damned or saved, but probably to be saved eventually, by special dispensation.  Neutrality is the pivot around which the Dantean system revolves and it is the key to understanding the enormity of Dante's sadism as well as the symbolistic excess of his transcendent depiction of the gigantic hierarchical rose made of people he imagines in heaven.        

            From Dante to Newton a transition occurs in the reigning systems of knowledge. Science grows out of as well as contests the supremacy of Christ. Science abstracts the Christian will to knowledge and power, subsumes it and continues it, in secular form, at the same time. By the time of Newton, the scientist had replaced the saint as the canonized lion of modern culture. Newton became a virtually religious icon for the new and scientific world. Newton's attempt to create a totalistic explanation of the Universe, however much it may differ in its design and application from the universe of Dante or Aquinas is essentially a description that grants power over nature and society.  Like Dante and Aquinas, Newton dreamed of total power: while he publicly published books on gravity and optics, privately he pursued alchemical goals of obtaining ultimate riches, gold and immortality through alchemy. [9] He also wrote many justifications of Christianity and its view of history.

            God, gold, immortality, power and knowledge were all part of the prize and glory of reason, conquest and invasion.  Newton's science enshrines the value of Empire and conquest. The value of empire is inseparably emeshed with his accurate descriptions of force, gravity, light and action at a distance.  Newton is an icon for the secular Magisterium. I will discuss Newton at greater length later. Here I wish only to stress the similarities between Augustine, Aquinas, Dante and Newton, and how each pursued a project of total explanation that sought to justify the supremacy of the intellect. Each of these men would codify and express a system of knowledge that formed the basis, and in a way, is a symbol of, different forms of power that governed different times and social orders.

            Neither the blood of Christian martyrs, nor the heroic discoveries of science can excuse or negate the blood and destruction brought by Christians and scientists. Cultural icons stare out at the viewer from an abstract space representing eternal truths or traditions.  The icon of Newton can be imagined gazing over the charred bodies in Nagasaki, just as the Icons of Christian saints look into pools of blood from Hispanola to the missions of California. Instead of the 'the world the slaves and Master's made' or the "Indian's New World", let us consider the atrocities that power made and the blood that knowledge spilled.

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