The Day the West Was Born

The Day Western Culture Was Born

In Genesis 12:1 we read, “And God spoke to Abram.” It’s the day Western culture was born. For a number of years I have argued that Western culture is the most powerful and influential of all time. I have also argued that Western culture is a product of divine revelation. All of its important ideas result from God speaking to mankind. Today we go back to its beginning.

Genesis 1:1 tells us how the world got its start. God spoke it into existence. Ps. 33:6 tells us, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” Later in chapter one comes another big event in world history, the creation of man. Gen. 1:27 tells us God created man in His own image, male and female created He them. This is the most important and powerful statement ever made about men and about women. Human beings have infinite worth and value because God says they do.  They were created in His image. No one else has ever believed this except those exposed to the teaching of this verse and it has affected history more than any other idea. 

You may know the outline of the Genesis story. After creation man falls into sin and spirals down, down, down into an abyss of evil. By the time we get to Gen. 6 we read, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶ And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 

Only Noah found grace in the sight of God and God decided to destroy all of mankind except Noah and his family.  Then comes the flood. When we read the chapters after the flood we seem to be heading in the same direction as pre-Noah. Man is spiraling downward into evil again. And then occurs one of the supreme turning points in human history. It’s easy to miss if you are not paying attention. The beginning of Genesis 12 says, “Now the Lord said to Abram….” The Lord spoke. The great God of the universe, who had spoken everything into existence, who was sovereign over creation, enters human history and speaks to a man. We have a speaking God. He communicates with us and what He has to say is by infinite degrees of magnitude the most important truths that will ever enter the human mind.

God tells Abram that He is taking him away from his home country and giving him a new land. And that out of Abram he will form a new nation and that through him the entire world will be blessed. He is referring, of course, to the formation of the Jewish nation and the coming of the centerpiece of human history, the messiah, Jesus Christ.

500 years after Abraham God spoke again, this time to Moses. He inspired Moses to write the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In the Torah God revealed the truths that are basic to our civilization, without which our modern world would not exist, without which we would have fallen back into the same world that existed in Noah’s day. What are some of those ideas? Genesis 1:1 tells us that God was separate from His creation. This idea is essential for modern science to exist. We are told at the beginning of the Bible of a rational God who invites us to study Him. As a result, Christianity has produced history’s greatest theologians. In fact, one scholar has argued Christianity has produced all of the world’s theologians because of the rational God who has revealed Himself in Genesis. God’s written Word reveals another crucial truth. Almost all ancient religions believed God created the world through some sort of sexual activity but God tells us He spoke the universe into existence. From this follows the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. Without the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic our civilization would not exist. To sum up, without the truth that God has revealed in the Bible, science, theology, and western culture would never have come into being.

Remember this when you read your Bible. Teach it to your children. Proclaim it to your friends, family, and everyone you know.

Rejoice that our God has spoken and made our lives so rich. Be sure and check the resources below. May the Lord bless you in a mighty way.

For the biblical foundations of modern science see Rodney Stark’s, How the West Won, particularly chapter 15: https://www.amazon.com/How-West-Won-Neglected-Modernity/dp/161017139X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=how+the+west+won&qid=1625678410&sr=8-1

A great book on the birth of science in the Middle Ages is James Hannum’s, The Genesis of Science: https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Science-Christian-Scientific-Revolution/dp/1596981555/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1625678522&sr=8-1

A brilliant essay on how the biblical view of sexuality made Western Culture possible is by Dennis Prager: https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/marriage-and-family/sexuality/judaism-s-sexual-revolution-why-judaism-rejected-homosexuality.html

I elaborate on the arguments of this video in Seven Ideas that Changed the World: https://www.amazon.com/Ideas-That-Changed-World-civilizations-ebook/dp/B085MM79ZB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=seven+ideas+that+changed+the+world&qid=1584653313&sr=8-1