The Decline and Fall of Latin Christian Civilization

Every person and group faces a choice, at each moment, whether to follow Jesus on the path of freedom or six conventional Olympian gods on the path of power. Over an extended period of time, persons and groups establish themselves either on the Christian side of the spectrum or on the Olympian side. They also tend to move toward one end of the spectrum or the other.

In his book, An Historian’s Approach to Religion (1956), English historian Arnold Toynbee expressed his admiration for the Medieval Western Christian way of living because it maintained an unusual and delicate balance between freedom and power. Certain Latin Christian leaders kept themselves closer to the freedom end of the spectrum than was true of those before and after them. The best years of this balance, according to Toynbee, began in 1073 with the papacy of Gregory 7^th.