Bacon saw Christianity as intellectually indebted to its infidel enemies

Evidence

Bacon begins by asserting that there are only two ways in which the various sects he has analyzed can be persuaded of the truth: either by miracles, or by philosophy. He places no reliance on the availability of miracles. He has already excluded war; he now excludes miracles. It follows that only philosophy is left. But it is here precisely that Christendom is weak. “Philosophy,” he says, “is the special province of the unbelievers: we have it all from them.” — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 346

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that the community proposing to convert its enemies actually depends on them for its own intellectual self-understanding is a genuinely paradigm-shifting reversal of the whole crusading worldview.

Related

• Bacon abandoned biblical prophecy to read Islam through philosophy (similarity 0.86)
• Medieval Christian theologian Bacon saw other religions as imperfect stages toward truth, not evil (similarity 0.81)
• Thirteenth-century Christians already debated whether rational argument or faith alone could convert infidels (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval thinkers argued rational persuasion, not crusade war, would convert infidels (similarity 0.81)
• Bacon omitted satanic agency from his account of Islam (similarity 0.80)
• Roger Bacon held Islam as imperfect Christianity from ignorance, not evil (similarity 0.80)
• Roger Bacon was overshadowed by later myth-making about him (similarity 0.80)
• Bacon’s scientific framing removed Satan as the explanation for Muhammad unlike earlier polemicists (similarity 0.79)
• Believers accept as true whatever harms their enemies’ cause (similarity 0.79)