Christian universalism’s rationalist turn converted non-believers into irrational others

Evidence

Perhaps indeed European denigration of the other is the back side of Christian universalism. As European Christian ideology crystalized and hardened in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was less and less room for dissent. The increasing use of reason to justify this ideology aggravated the situation: those who refused to listen to Christian reason must be irrational: the blind Jew, the stubborn heretic, the fleshbound Saracen. Well into the thirteenth century, the Saracen indeed had a better reputation than the non-Christians closer to home. The Saracen was reputed for his learning, seen as eminently rational; he (like the Jew) became the object of philosophical polemics and impassioned preaching. When, toward the end of the thirteenth century, it became clear that the Saracen was (like the Jew) impermeable to such “rational” argument, he was relegated to the subrational world of carnal, semibeastly humans. The Saracen (and more generally the non-Christian, be he Jew or Cathar or, in the centuries that followed, an African animist or an Inca priest) was different, was inferior, precisely because he refused the universal and rational message of Christianity. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1381 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Greeks treated mythology as national while Christians ascribed it to universals — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 265; The Messiah who became the neighbor has also become the enemy; Christian universalism’s exclusivist flip side produced ever harsher denigration (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Universalist reason itself produced the exclusion of religious others as irrational #expands (0.95) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1381