The development of Christian thought and that of the western mind are forever interlinked

That may be true on a casual inspection, but I sincerely doubt the roots of the western mind have more than a passing association with the history of Christianity, as a sort of temporary load in memory. As a metaphor, if you write a religious doctrine up on your word-processor, and it explains the whole universe and everything in it, you could easily assert that the roots of computer technology are intimately tied to the ramifications of your religious doctrine. But to the computer the whole universe of explanation and historical exegesis you have created is just a passing load in RAM, and some space somewhere in the hard disk landscape, nothing more.

But it is a very limited metaphor==the mind being much more creative and unbounded than RAM.


A