What is the West?

A correspondent writes:

And would you please define “Western”? No one else seems to be able to do so, in any deep sense.

Definition of the West (more precisely the Christian West): the multilayered culture that over a period of centuries grew out of the merging of Hebraic religion, Greek philosophy and literature and art, Roman law and organization, and Germanic Barbarian culture. The aspect the pope focuses on is the harmonization of the Hebraic experience of the transcendent creator God and the revelation of Jesus Christ with the Greek experience of the logos/word/reason (i.e., the principle of intelligibility), which created the Christian religion. It’s worth reading his speech, certainly the first part where he discusses this theme.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 17, 2006 03:15 PM | Send