The General detailed at length what he enjoyed about the film "300" in the previous post. So, I wanted to spit out one of the movie's failures and connect to a larger point.
One of my favorite writers today is Victor Davis Hanson. VDH gets tons of hits because I linked it in the HIFI sidebar. Hanson writes beautifully, and he defends Western Civilization from modern deconstruction with sharp insight.
Hanson wrote the introduction for a book on the making of this movie and also reviewed the film. It seems that he and Frank Miller are on the same page regarding history and man's quest for freedom.
They are both wrong. Despite what is suggested in the film and your average history book (or even books written by VDH, which are excellent), secularism does not lead to freedom. The concept of a secular reality began with Jewish monotheism, which stood in stark contrast to the animism of pagan religions. When secularism is divorced from its monotheistic mooring, Secularism becomes a tyranny of its own (see Stalin, Mao, and Pol-Pot).
In general, the contribution of ancient Greek city-states to the development of the West is way over-stated. The Greek and Roman cultures did not consider compassion to be a virtue. The truth is that Christianity is the basis for the correct understanding of freedom, which led to labor laws, civil rights, human rights, etc.
True freedom is found in the Bible. A slave of righteousness enjoys freedom in Christ.
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1 comment:
This is a needed counterbalance. Greeks grasped something of passion and bravery but they were ignorant on grace.
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