No other book has influenced western civilization as much as the Bible. From its historical narratives, moral teachings, and existential claims, the Bible has laid the groundwork for democratic forms of government and law, the rational exploration of the natural world, movements in both art and literature, societal morals and values. Pudaite provides a sampling of the areas that have been affected by the Bible:
Almost all of the good things of life that we take for granted bear the stamp of the Bible’s influence—marriage, family, names, calendar, institutions of caring, social agencies, education, benefits from science, uplifting books, magnificent works of art and music, freedom, justice, equal rights, the work ethic, the virtues of self-reliance and self-discipline. (Pudaite and Hefley, GBEW, 114)
1. Government and Law
In the area of human governance and law, the Bible has contributed significantly to three developments that have shaped the consciousness and conscience of western civilization: (1) individual autonomy and the democratic process, (2) a separation of secular government from the religious institution, and (3) the maintaining of a system of justice. Ronald J. Sider, Distinguished Professor of Theology at Eastern University, highlights basic biblical principles that have become normative assumptions within democratic societies, showing how the biblical understanding of human nature is determinative in establishing societies that are appropriately free for the individual and that protect against totalitarian overreach:
This biblical story shapes the Christian approach to public life in profound ways. For example, persons are not merely complex machines to be programmed for the good of the state. They are immeasurably valuable beings, so loved by their Creator that he suffered the hell of Roman crucifixion for them, free beings called to shape history along with God and neighbor, immortal beings whose ultimate destiny far transcends any passing political system. Public life is important because it shapes the social context in which people respond to God’s invitation to live in right relationship with both himself and neighbor. . . . Probably the best protection against political totalitarianism is the recognition that the state is not the ultimate source of value and law. If people in a society believe strongly that there exists a higher law grounded in God the Creator to which current legislation ought to conform and which citizens ought to obey even if that entails civil disobedience, totalitarianism will be held in check. . . . Decentralized decision making, even if it means a certain loss of efficiency, is in keeping with the biblical vision of persons as coshapers under God of their own history. . . . The democratic political process . . . is the political system most compatible with biblical values about the importance of the individual and the pervasiveness of sin. Genuine political democracy decentralizes political power more completely than any other form of government. As Reinhold Niebuhr never tired of pointing out, democracy is necessary precisely because people are sinful. At the same time, it is because each individual is of inestimable worth to God that every person should be free to help shape his or her political destiny. . . . The state should not promote or establish any religion or denomination. Nor is the separation of church and state merely a pragmatic necessity in a pluralistic society. Religious faith by its very nature is a free response to God. It cannot be coerced. Throughout biblical history, we see a sovereign God constantly inviting persons into free dialogue with himself. He invites obedience but is astonishingly patient with those who decline the invitation. If the history of Israel tells us anything, it discloses how much space God gives people to reject his will and still continue to enjoy the created gifts of food, health, and life. Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:24ff.) makes it clear that God chooses to allow believers and nonbelievers to live and enjoy the world together until the end of history. Since God intends history to be the place where people have the freedom to respond or not respond to him, the state should not promote or hinder religious belief. (Sider, EVAD, 38, 41–43)
The Bible has also informed both the substance and framework of modern legal structures. Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach demonstrate how the biblical principle of retributive justice is still the only form of jurisprudence that is truly “just”:
The principle of retribution guarantees that only guilty people are punished. Retribution is based on the premise that the appropriate authority should impose a punishment if, and only if, an offence has actually been committed. Retribution therefore ensures that no one is punished if he or she does not deserve it. Similarly, the principle of retribution also ensures a given punishment is proportional to its crime. It recognizes that serious crimes deserve severe punishments, whereas more trivial offences warrant milder sanctions. Finally, the principle of retribution also safeguards the principle of equity, for the only factors allowed to affect the severity of a punishment are those that affect the nature of the crime. Irrelevant differences such as the race, gender or social class of the offender should have no impact on sentencing. It is clear, therefore, that the principle of retribution secures those elements of a system of punishment both required by Scripture and in accord with our natural sense of right and wrong. Retribution may be combined with the elements of deterrence or correction, but by itself safeguards these biblical principles. (Jeffery et al., POT, 256)
While the quotation above explains the principle of retribution, we acknowledge that human error may fail to administer it accurately. Though space limitations do not allow us to describe the intrinsic flaws of other legal theories, we can safely say that alternative theories have often led to gross abuses.
Finally, Barbara Armacost and Peter Enns, in their close examination of the biblical prophets, describe the context within which this system of retributive justice should work:
First, biblical justice is procedural as well as substantive. It requires fair and unbiased adjudication as well as fair and principled laws. Second, justice is largely relational and has particular claims on those who are in positions of power or authority over others. Third, biblical justice requires special attention to the way laws and legal institutions treat the most vulnerable individuals in our communities. Fourth, there is a sense in which modern lawyers should see themselves as having a prophetic role in their communities, either as insiders working for justice in law and legal institutions or as outsiders who bring to light injustice and call for its eradication. (Armacost and Enns, COJ, 134–135)
2. Science and Education
In his sobering essay on how monotheism affected the shape of western civilization, Stark effectively counters many revisionist narratives that have become popular in contemporary culture. One of the biggest myths that Stark exposes is the inflated, if not totally fabricated, idea that religion (particularly Christianity) was somehow an obstacle to, rather than a catalyst for, the advent of science and the rise of higher education:
There was no “scientific revolution” that finally burst through the superstitious barriers of faith, but that the flowering of science that took place in the sixteenth century was the normal, gradual, and direct outgrowth of Scholasticism and the medieval universities. Indeed, theological assumptions unique to Christianity explain why science was born only in Christian Europe. Contrary to the received wisdom, religion and science not only were compatible; they were inseparable. . . . The reason we didn’t know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith. From Thomas Hobbes through Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, false claims about religion and science have been used as weapons in the battle to “free” the human mind from the “fetters of faith.” . . . I argue not only that there is no inherent conflict between religion and science, but that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science. (Stark, FGG, 3, 123)
Stark summarizes the reasons for the truth of this thesis (the italicized portion above):
Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being and the universe as his personal creation, thus having a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting human comprehension. . . The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: Nature exists because it was created by God. To love and honor God, one must fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Moreover, because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, we ought to be able to discover these principles. (Stark, FGG, 157)
Both the understanding of a rational Creator of the universe and the inseparability of Christian theism from scientific truths led Sir Isaac Newton to ground his views of absolute time and space on the eternity and omnipresence of God. In his Principia, Newton states:
The supreme God is an eternal, infinite, and absolutely perfect being . . ., He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient, that is, he endures from eternity to eternity, and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen. He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration and space, but he endures and is present. He endures always and is present everywhere, and by existing always and everywhere he constitutes duration and space. Since each and every particle of space is always, and each and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the maker and lord of all things will not be never or nowhere. . . . It is agreed that the supreme God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere. (Newton, INPW, 111–112)
Finally, Stark illustrates that Christian theism provided the proper context for the flourishing of science and the humanities:
The university was a Christian invention that evolved from cathedral schools established to train monks and priests. The first two universities appeared in Paris (where both Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas taught) and Bologna, in the middle of the twelfth century. Oxford and Cambridge were founded around 1200, and then came a flood of new institutions during the remainder of the thirteenth century. . . The university was something new under the sun—an institution devoted exclusively to “higher learning.” It was not a monastery or place for meditation. . . . The medieval universities were unlike Chinese academies for training Mandarins or a Zen master’s school. They were not primarily concerned with imparting the received wisdom. Rather, just as is the case today, faculty gained fame and invitations to join faculties elsewhere by innovation. (Stark, FGG, 62–63)
3. Art, Literature, and Music
The Bible has been a fundamental source for nearly every genre of art and literature, and has provided inspiration for innumerable visionaries who have elevated the artistic endeavor to its highest form. Pudaite provides some examples of areas in which the Bible has left its mark on the arts:
Since the beginning of the Christian era, the Bible has inspired great works of art. The frescoes of the Roman catacombs reveal Biblical concepts of faith and hope. When Christianity became a legal religion in the Roman Empire, Christian art blossomed in the churches and on monuments. Through the 19th century, the greatest sculptures and paintings were based on characters or incidents in the Bible. The greatest artists—Raphael, Leondardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and others—are most remembered and appreciated for their biblical masterpieces. (Pudaite and Hefley, GBEW, 123)
T. R. Henn, former president of St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge, distinguishes the Bible from all other great works of antiquity and shows the Bible’s formational impact on the literature of the western world:
As “literature” it [the Bible] is, in many ways, remote from our present consciousness. There is no single work of comparable quality and intention (still less of current availability) with which we may compare it. We may read the Koran, or the Granth Sahib, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Babylonian Epic of Creation, the Law Code of Hammurabi; and these, together with various anthologies, provide some material for comparisons, throw some oblique and broken light; but little more. In its range, its unity, its diversity, its two major symphonic movements of promise and fulfilment, in its avoidance (in general) of arid and now pointless narrative or gnomic reflections that are of little relevance to the West, the Bible is unique. . . . How far, then, can the Bible be considered as literature, in any coherent sense? It is clear that it has been burned deeply into the fabric of the life and literature of the English-speaking peoples. . . . Its proverbs and its parables, its episodes sacred or profane, have been expounded in drama and poetry from the earliest written English. It has supplied the themes or framework for epic, satire, tragedy, comedy, farce, ballet; above all, its dramatic and choric potential make it specially suitable for oratorio. It has furnished allusions or depth-images to an incalculably great mass of writing. Its rhythms have been engrafted historically into much of our prose. (Henn, BAL, 21, 9–10)
Chase further emphasizes how the Bible has impacted some of history’s greatest minds:
The language of the Bible, now simple and direct in its homely vigour, now sonorous and stately in its richness, has placed its indelible stamp upon our best writers from Bacon to Lincoln and even to the present day. Without it there would be no Paradise Lost, no Samson Agonistes, no Pilgrim’s Progress; no William Blake, or Whittier, or T. S. Eliot as we know them; no Emerson or Thoreau, no negro Spirituals, no Address at Gettysburg. Without it the words of Burke and Washington, Patrick Henry and Winston Churchill would miss alike their eloquence and their meaning. Without a knowledge of it the best of our literature remains obscure, and many of the characteristic features and qualities of our spoken language are threatened with extinction. (Chase, BCR, 9)
Pudaite illustrates how the Bible has affected some of the greatest musical composers:
The creators of the greatest oratorios, anthems, symphonies, hymns, and other classics were inspired by the Bible. Bach’s “Jesus Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Mendelssohn’s “Elijah,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Brahms’s “Requiem,” Beethoven’s “Mount of Olives,” and Haydn’s “Creation” are some of the best known works inspired by the Bible. After hearing his magnificent work, Haydn said, “Not I, but a power from above created that.” Bach often wrote I.N.J. for the Latin words meaning “In the Name of Jesus” on his manuscripts. (Pudaite and Hefley, GBEW, 123)
Influential theologian, philosopher, and author Francis Schaeffer provides even greater insight into how the Bible influenced the work of a genius like Bach:
His music was a direct result of the Reformation culture and the biblical Christianity of the time, which was so much a part of Bach himself. There would have been no Bach had there been no Luther. . . . It was appropriate that the last thing Bach the Christian wrote was “Before Thy Throne I Now Appear.” Bach consciously related both the form and the words of his music to biblical truth. . . . This rested on the fact that the Bible gives unity to the universal and the particulars, and therefore the particulars have meaning. Expressed musically, there can be endless variety and diversity without chaos. There is variety yet resolution. (Schaeffer, HSWTL, 92)
4. Societal Norms and Values
The Bible has shaped social morality more than any other book. One glaring example where a biblically informed Christianity drastically changed a commonly held societal norm that has existed in nearly every culture throughout history is that of slavery. Stark illustrates how Christian theology, grounded in biblical principles, led fervent believers to the conclusion that slavery was morally reprehensible and therefore required organized action:
Of all the world’s religions, including the three great monotheisms, only in Christianity did the idea develop that slavery was sinful and must be abolished. Although it has been fashionable to deny it, antislavery doctrines began to appear in Christian theology soon after the decline of Rome and were accompanied by the eventual disappearance of slavery in all but the fringes of Christian Europe. When Europeans subsequently instituted slavery in the New World, they did so over strenuous papal opposition, a fact that was conveniently “lost” from history until recently. Finally, the abolition of New World slavery was initiated and achieved by Christian activists. (Stark, FGG, 291)
There are many more examples of when, where, and how the Bible has positively impacted the course of human events and thinking, but these few seem sufficient to establish the unique presence that the Bible commands in our world today.
At the time of this writing, a new museum is being constructed at a cost of nearly one billion dollars in the heart of Washington, D.C. dedicated to making accessible to the public the text, history, and legacy of the Bible. This museum will house more than forty thousand artifacts that relate to both the history told in the Bible and the history of the Bible itself. While neither this chapter nor this 430,000-square-foot museum in any way proves the claims of the Bible or certain doctrines concerning the Bible (e.g., inspiration and inerrancy), they certainly underscore the conclusion that the Bible is a central piece of humanity’s shared history and that it is worthy of continued investigation, critical engagement, and appreciation. Indeed, anyone sincerely seeking truth would consider the ongoing impact of a book that, although it reached completion nearly 2,000 years ago, continues to have a range of appeal and influence that is unique.
McDowell, Josh; McDowell, Sean. Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World.
