THE BOOK THAT MADE YOUR WORLD
How the Bible created the soul of Western civilisation
By Vishal Mangalwadi. Thomas Nelson. 352 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 595 553 225
Why did Western civilisation develop in the way that it did? Why did the concept of human dignity and the use of reason arise; not to mention science and technology, languages, literature, liberty, morality and much more? Why did these things appear in a systematic way in the West, and not elsewhere? Why does it matter?
Vishal Mangalwadi is an Indian philosopher; he’s also a Christian. This, his latest book, responds to the above questions with one simple answer: the subtitle of the book is ‘How the Bible created the soul of Western civilisation’. Mangalwadi analyses the philosophical roots of Western civilisation — to show that the Bible lies at their very heart. Being a non-Westerner, he is ideally placed to perform this task. To use an analogy, he is able to look into the goldfish bowl, and observe the water which the goldfish are not even aware of. We are the goldfish, and the water which has kept us alive for centuries is the philosophical fruit of the Bible; but we’re not even aware of it most of the time. We call it ‘common sense’; in fact, it’s anything but. Mangalwadi knows that ‘common sense’ to an Indian person is very different to our ‘common sense’. Our common sense is saturated by Christian assumptions — assumptions which are being rapidly eroded by secularism and other ideologies.
