Rodney Stark, distinguished senior fellow at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and a prolific author, has generated quite a bit of buzz

in Waco, Texas, and a prolific author, has generated quite a bit of buzz — some critical, some complimentary — with the publication of his latest book, Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (Random House, 2005). He spoke with Register correspondent Scott McDermott at the Center for Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where Stark delivered the inaugural Templeton Lectures in February.

How exactly did Christian theology in the West help give rise to modern science?

Two ways. One, the commitment to reason and logic, which simply cannot be overstated. The patristic fathers again and again say that reason is a virtue, reason is a great gift. We must try to understand God’s creation and God’s will. Augustine makes this wonderful statement: There are things about salvation that we do not yet understand, but we shall. And that was the whole view, that we can logic it out.

Secondly, they believed in intelligent design. As a result, they believed that God was the great watchmaker, that his creation was the epitome of rationality, that it ran according to absolutely determinable rules. And, of course, they looked for the rules — that was their hypothesis, that the rules were there — and by golly, they found the rules. But if they hadn’t believed the rules were there to be found, they wouldn’t have looked for them. The Chinese didn’t look for them, the Greeks didn’t look for them, because they believed that the universe was just too mysterious, and perhaps uncreated.

You describe how growth in technology went hand in hand with the rise of capitalism. How was the Catholic Church involved with the beginning of free markets?

The great monasteries were very efficient because they never had the problem that the noble estates had, which was the idiot son. Each generation of the folks running the big monastic operations were the best they had in that age group, rather than some dope. Consequently, they were very well run. Secondly, they could lay plans to clear land that wasn’t going to pay off for a century, but they would pursue it for a century because they had the proper succession to do that.

And so by the eighth and ninth centuries the monastic estates were getting enormously productive and wealthy, so much so that they had all kinds of surpluses to sell, to bargain with, and they did. And they began to specialize. There was one that specialized in racehorses — I mean that’s how specialized they could be. Or some would make wine, and they’d sell all their wine and buy all their robes and all the other stuff they needed, and what was emerging was a big free market in Europe.

Of course, they piled up a lot of money. Kings always needed money, and so the monastic estates started doing some banking. A lot of this starts looking like capitalism, because capitalism is simply the sustained application of reason to commerce. And the amazing thing is that monastic thinkers, men who’ve taken vows of poverty, who were living the secluded life, nevertheless sat down and rethought the Church’s entire position on commerce.

You describe how the Italian city-states then took over, developing the great banking houses, and that they were able to do this because of their political freedom. How did the Church promote political freedom in the Middle Ages?

You know, the idea of the “divine right of kings” comes out of Asia. That’s Confucianist. The Church never committed itself to the divine right of kings. A lot of kings tried to announce the divine right of kings, but the Church never ratified it. Go read Augustine’s City of God. Augustine asks what the difference between an emperor and a pirate is and his answer is: the size of his fleet. They’re both bad guys, if you will. Well, a lot of Christians reading that today would be shocked to see that, but it really was the Church’s view of the state, which is: “We’re not in bed with you guys, you’re on your own, and we’re the superior authority if it really comes down to it.”

The Christian theologians, after all, had always been building up a whole theology of equality and freedom. I mean, to say “go and sin no more” is nonsense if I don’t have some degree of freedom to govern my actions, and that not only means free will; it means political freedom. It means I can’t be required to do certain things. Early on the Catholic Church was the first religious institution to decide that slavery was a sin and they got rid of slavery in Europe. It came back again in the new world. The Pope fought it fiercely, but he didn’t have any political power. This was right at the time the king of Spain had sacked Rome.

The Galileo case is always the first one that’s thrown in our face, so how would you respond to someone who uses that as an example of Catholic obscurantism?

In a book called For the Glory of God I do deal with Galileo. It’s an interesting problem. Galileo mostly got in trouble for being a jerk. That’s a terrible thing to say, but he betrayed the Pope. The Pope, who had been his friend, said, “Hey, when you publish the book, say these are your scientific hypotheses and everything’s fine.” And he said he would, and then he didn’t; he said, “This is the truth and the Church is wrong.” Rightfully, the Pope got very mad and took it out on him.

On the other hand, the punishment was very mild. Isn’t it interesting that … [Galileo] wouldn’t leave the Church? He died a Catholic. It’s interesting also that, while the book was put on the prohibited list — I don’t know about Italy, but in Spain at least — it was never prohibited. The book was always available and circulated. The Inquisition did nothing about Galileo’s books.

If we think about the universe and it being inhabited by human beings, then we have to talk about all kinds of obligations and commitments and contexts. And for whatever reason, Galileo chose not to be a martyr but to be a smart-off. It was a very minor, minor, minor thing he had to do [at the Pope’s request]; probably it was even, in terms of the philosophy of science, appropriate. You know, we never prove things in science; we fail to disprove them. Turns out that the claim that the sun was in the center and everything went around it was true, but everything else that Galileo and Copernicus had to say about the solar system was wrong.

Scott McDermott is a librarian at Vanderbilt University

Divinity School.