Heresy Without God
Scholasticism was the dominant intellectual method of medieval Europe. It was how educated people were trained to think, argue, and reason. Its purpose was not free exploration, but internal coherence. Truth was assumed to already exist. The task of the thinker was not to discover new foundations, but to clarify, systematize, and defend the given ones through disciplined argument.
Scholasticism was not stupidity.
It was order.
In medieval Europe, it emerged as a rigorous way of thinking inside a fragile civilization. Truth was given. God existed. Scripture was authoritative. Salvation mattered. Within those assumptions, thinkers were encouraged to argue fiercely. They dissected concepts, listed objections, refined distinctions, and reconciled contradictions with extraordinary precision. The method was serious, logical, and exacting.
But it had limits. Certain questions could not be asked. You could debate how God acted, not whether God existed. You could argue about grace and free will, not whether salvation itself was a coherent goal. Debate was permitted only after loyalty to the frame had been established. This was not hypocrisy. It was survival. The medieval world needed coherence more than openness. Too much doubt would have dissolved the metaphysical glue holding society together.
Within those boundaries, scholasticism did real work. It trained minds. It built universities. It taught Europe how to argue carefully. But reason was fenced in. Inquiry was real, but never final.
We like to believe we escaped that world.
We tell ourselves we live in an age of free inquiry, secular reason, and open debate. God is gone. Authority dismantled. Everything discussable. But this is a comforting illusion. Scholasticism did not disappear. It was secularized.
Today we argue relentlessly. But only after affirming a new set of unquestionable premises. Democracy is the highest political form. Progress is linear and moral. Equality is self-evidently good in all its expressions. History moves in one direction. Certain intentions redeem any outcome. These claims are no longer argued. They are assumed.
Try to question them seriously.
You may debate how democracy should function, but not whether it deserves universal allegiance. You may criticize politicians, but not the system that produces them. You may discuss failures, but only as deviations from an otherwise sacred trajectory. The moment you ask whether democracy has limits, pathologies, or an expiration date, you are no longer debating. You are marked.
The response is not argument.
It is moral alarm.
This is exactly how scholasticism worked. You were free to argue yes and no, as long as you stayed inside the walls. Step outside, and the issue was no longer truth, but legitimacy. You were not wrong. You were dangerous.
Modern discourse follows the same pattern. It presents itself as rational while enforcing taboos. It claims to be evidence-based while reacting to certain questions with outrage rather than analysis. It insists it has no dogmas while treating some beliefs as untouchable.
God has been removed.
The structure of belief remains.
Democracy now functions less as a system to be evaluated than as a moral sacrament. To participate, you must affirm it. To question it is not framed as inquiry, but as a defect of character. Just as medieval thinkers could not ask whether salvation mattered, modern thinkers cannot ask whether democratic legitimacy might fail under certain conditions.
This does not mean democracy is bad.
It means it has become sacred.
And sacred things do not tolerate scrutiny.
The result is an intellectual climate that feels energetic but goes nowhere. Debate is constant, but shallow. Disagreement is permitted only at the surface. First principles are insulated from contact. Everyone argues, but nothing fundamental moves. Noise replaces thought. Motion replaces direction.
Scholasticism once taught people how to think inside God.
Modern scholasticism teaches people how to think inside progress.
Both systems are internally rational.
Both are hostile to ultimate questions.
The danger is not that societies rely on shared assumptions. Every society does. The danger is forgetting that these are assumptions at all. When a moral framework becomes invisible, it stops being examined and starts being enforced.
That is when heresy returns. Not as theology, but as politics.
And that is where we are today.