The Birth of Modern Belief —— Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

Got this book at my public library (surprisingly). This is what I would call a semi-academic work. Its target audience includes those who already have a fair amount of background in the subject: European culture, history, and thought. If (like myself) you studied this sort of material long ago, and wish to refresh your knowledge and see things in another perspective, this is for you. However, it is not a textbook or comprehensive treatise, and is not an introduction for those without some foundation. I cannot imagine that the target audience pays much attention to Amazon reviews! But perhaps the author will drop by, just out of curiosity. Well then: I believe (hah!) there is one area that the book did not discuss, but should have: factors promoting disbelief, beyond empiricism and modern science. Particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, we see reliance on the testimony of numerous others, in the written or oral traditions, as one major factor defining belief. We also learn about how one's conduct was often taken as proof or disproof of one's own belief. But the book has little to say about whether the conduct of other persons can cause one's disbelief, or modify belief. That was certainly important to Luther, and is important today.

I read this for required reading in a graduate history seminar. I can’t imagine what this book intends to accomplish, as its basic premise—that ‘belief’ is an historical phenomenon with a unique history to be studied—is frankly ludicrous. Shagan takes the semantic, etymological, linguistic, cultural and interpretive nature of the concept of belief and writes a tome treating it as a material thing with a life and the propensity to evolve. This is the kind of drivel that academics with fat salaries and tenure are allowed to publish. This never could have been published as a first book by a newly minted PhD, because it does not treat in history. It is a speculative, ahistorical, highfalutin, elite-centric treatment of a question unsuited to historical inquiry. Whether a group of cultural elites—highly educated ponderers of religious mystery—decide arbitrarily that another person’s worldview is false has no bearing on whether that maligned individual’s understanding of the world is or is not ‘true belief’. Shagan says that ‘belief’ as such was proscribed, appropriately applied only to the Church’s explicit teachings about the christian god and afterlife, and as a result, ‘belief’ could not meaningfully encompass the concept of personal, subjective belief in the sense that we understand today. But again, this is ludicrous. Humanity is not and never has been homogeneous. The elite theology emanating from Canterbury was not and never could be identical to the common religion of the innumerable villages and hamlets dotting the British countryside or of the taverns and backalleys of premodern London. Belief is a mental state, a state of being. It is not a ‘thing’ with its own life to be studied. This entire study was a waste of paper, ink, and money.

I've found this book extremely thought provoking: a fruitful read altogether, in fact I am thinking if adding a physical copy to the kindle one since I can see it's one to revisit frequently.

I read this for required reading in a graduate history seminar. I can’t imagine what this book intends to accomplish, as its basic premise—that ‘belief’ is an historical phenomenon with a unique history to be studied—is frankly ludicrous. Shagan takes the semantic, etymological, linguistic, cultural and interpretive nature of the concept of belief and writes a tome treating it as a material thing with a life and the propensity to evolve. This is the kind of drivel that academics with fat salaries and tenure are allowed to publish. This never could have been published as a first book by a newly minted PhD, because it does not treat in history. It is a speculative, ahistorical, highfalutin, elite-centric treatment of a question unsuited to historical inquiry. Whether a group of cultural elites—highly educated ponderers of religious mystery—decide arbitrarily that another person’s worldview is false has no bearing on whether that maligned individual’s understanding of the world is or is not ‘true belief’. Shagan says that ‘belief’ as such was proscribed, appropriately applied only to the Church’s explicit teachings about the christian god and afterlife, and as a result, ‘belief’ could not meaningfully encompass the concept of personal, subjective belief in the sense that we understand today. But again, this is ludicrous. Humanity is not and never has been homogeneous. The elite theology emanating from Canterbury was not and never could be identical to the common religion of the innumerable villages and hamlets dotting the British countryside or of the taverns and backalleys of premodern London. Belief is a mental state, a state of being. It is not a ‘thing’ with its own life to be studied. This entire study was a waste of paper, ink, and money.

This book brought into focus a lot of ideas which had been worrying me as a historian of European thought. Shagan has delved deeply into the ways that theologians considered the criteria for belief in three periods, 1) medieval Catholicism ('believe that you might understand'),2) the Reformation where belief for Catholics depended increasingly on acceptance of the authority of the Church and for Protestants where a strong emotional commitment was needed and 3) the seventeenth century where there was a reaction against this authoritarianism. Throughout Shagan provides a mass of relevant quotations. The Protestant Reformation brought a 'burden of belief', Protestants became obsessed with their own depravity. There had to be a reaction if society was not going to degenerate into permanent subservience to religion and Shagan explores how Montaigne, Descartes, John Locke, Spinoza ,etc, formulated this reaction. The theology of Arminius was especially important in challenging the pessimism of Calvin. Altogether this is an important contribution to the history of European thought. I might also mention that Ben Friedman's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism also sees Arminius as liberating European and American thought from the dire warnings of Calvin that most would burn in hell fire. What Christians believed to be the essence of 'true belief' in Christianity varied over time. This is important to recognise. Many readers, Christian or otherwise, would think more deeply about the nature of (religious) belief if they read this book.