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not a denigration of Christianity, or of Christians. No. It is
simply an examination of a cultural epistemology that may, in
the end, be “critical” but not underhandedly so, regardless of
that fact that, while I was raised a Christian, I am today an
atheist – or, on a “good” day, an agnostic. Regardless, any
investigation into the social and cultural influences upon 19 th -
Century rhetoric is sadly incomplete without looking at the
profound debt that Christianity is owed by Western thought. As
cultural historian Richard Tarnas contends: “Even now, in less
obvious but not less significant ways, the Christian world view
still affects – indeed permeates – the Western cultural psyche,
even when the latter is most apparently secular in disposition”
(91). With that said, I will follow Tarnas’ exploration of
Christianity’s origins and heritage, as spread out in his book
The Passion of the Western Mind, to acknowledge my own debt to
him in terms of my understanding of the epistemological nature
of Christianity and its influence upon Western rhetorical
thought and practice.
Tarnas contends that Christianity’s capacity to mold the
“Western cultural psyche” like so much wet clay is because of
its roots in Judaism and the philosophic tradition of the
Greeks. While the former is somewhat obvious, something made
very apparent with a simple turning of a Bible’s pages from the
“Old” to the “New” Testament, it is the latter that is, for me,
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