Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

The conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 368AD brought a transformation to Christianity and to Western civilization, the effects of which we still feel today. Constantine turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. This book looks at the rise of the 'divine' monarch, the struggle as Christianity painfully separated itself from Judaism and the conflict between faith and reason. Freeman looks closely at the two wellsprings of our civilization, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman, and how the tensions between them have created the culture in which we continue to live, think and believe.