Church
& History
I,
as a Christian, am required to have integrity, and honour the truth.
Much of what Christopher Hitchens says about things that have happened
in history and what he has witnessed around the world appear absolutely
right and those of us who are Christians should be the first to agree
and say it is wrong.
However,
I don't always think it was as simple and straight forward as he makes
out and I am certain that many of his comments or observations about
what happened in history are lacking understanding. For this reason
I would like to make the following observations:
1.
Using the name of Christianity
Without
a shadow of doubt the name ‘Christian' has been tagged by nationalists
or indeed politicians of many persuasions at many different times
in history to authenticate their claims and activities. When the founder
of Christianity declared, “I
tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”
(Mt 5:44) that gave no grounds for violence by words or deeds and
therefore those who have resorted to violence in the name of Christianity
have simply been using it for their own ends and not worshipping its
God.
Professor
Keith Ward in his book, Is Religion Dangerous (that we referred
to briefly in chapter 1) makes a good point:
In
short it is hatred and intolerance that causes religious texts
to be chosen to give a sham moral support to perverted natural
inclinations. It is not religion that causes intolerance. It is
intolerance that uses religion to give alleged ‘moral' support
to the real cause of intolerance – hatred of those perceived or
imagined to be oppressors or threats to one's own welfare.”
2.
What Quality of Christianity?
What
I think many of us don't realise is that supposed Christianity of
the Middle Ages was more often akin to superstition than what the
modern understanding of the Bible provides for us today. The fact
that today we click on the Internet or put a Bible CD into our computer
drive and go anywhere we like in the Bible with the search abilities
available to us, possibly makes us forget that in those days the Bible
was only accessible to a few and their understanding also was limited.
Thus in terms of Biblical knowledge as well as spiritual vitality,
there was a distinct barrenness.
It
is not surprising therefore that guilt and superstition generated
the Crusades and when a call came from the Eastern
Orthodox Byzantine Empire, they were easy prey to go along with it.
Similarly when the power house of the Pope gave blessing to a crusade
that added respectability to what was happening. It is probable that
fear of Muslim occupation was as much national as religious fear.
Again
and again when we look to the past, there is the indication that those
who led institutional Christianity from Rome
or Constantinople
had more political concerns
than spiritual. The reality is that it was a small miracle that Christianity
survived through those times, possibly despite institutional religion
instead of because of it.
Having
said this David Bentley Hart in 'Atheist Delusions' provides plenty
of evidence to show that down through history, there were large numbers
of prominent members of the Church who were providing immense help
for the poor, the needy and the sick. It is a somewhat 'solid read'
but well worth it to counter the delusions that are often put about
by the atheist lobby of the Church's part in history.
3.
Fluctuating Christianity
A
number of writers have pointed out that the most vibrant form of the
Christian church was that which existed in the first two centuries
and that which was regenerated by the Holy Spirit in certain parts
of the world-wide church in the twentieth century.
The
fact is, we would suggest, that the church was never designed by Christ
to be a single worldwide organisation, merely many different local
churches linked by travelling ministries. Where that had been so,
there had been increased security because opposition came against
individual local churches rather than against a world-wide body. It
was only when the Church was institutionalised by men did it take
on a political rather than spiritual nature and resort to the techniques
of politics to survive, instead of reliance upon God.
Even
under Rome in the earliest centuries, the church often had such a
good local reputation in the eyes of local Roman leaders, that when
they heard of persecution being ordered by Rome, they would warn the
local church to leave until it had passed. Such was the esteem in
which the local church was often held because of their good contributions
to local society, so that this often enabled them to survive the early
ravages of Rome.
However
the further history moved from the origins of the Church the less
vibrant it became. Thus the so called ‘Dark Ages' were not only so
called because of lack of historical information available to us today,
and lack of cultural vibrancy, but also because of the lack of life
in the Church. By the Middle Ages, corruption in the Church was upsetting
to many and was partly the eventual cause of Martin Luther's kicking
the Protestant Reformation into being.
Some
have suggested that throughout the two thousand year period of Church
History there have always been some pockets of genuine life and vibrancy
scattered around the world, yet the truth has to be acknowledged that
for a long time, that life and vibrancy was largely absent. When it
was, all that was left were institutional leaders acting more as politicians
than as spiritual leaders.
An
interesting examination of the history of the Christian Church reveals
that although what we have said above is so often true, there were
also these many pockets of life and vibrancy that helped move the
church on. Specifically the periods of so-called revival are worth
study and reveal that it is far from the truth to think that most
of church history was poor.
4.
Christianity versus Culture
If
we may pick up another thread from the first part above, it should
be noted that the drives of culture and politics, blended in with
superstitious religiosity (a far cry from genuine Christianity) were
often the things that motivated or energised culture. As has been
commented upon above, it is not religion that causes intolerance or
whatever other ‘sin' you want to point to, but it is the feelings
already within society that then seek to twist and make use of religion
for their own purposes. Simply, the drives of history that caused
negative behaviour did not originate in Christianity but used it for
their own ends.
5.
Imperfect People
One
of the things that atheists seek to do is pick on Christians from
the past who, struggling with their limited knowledge of the times,
came out with less than perfect understanding. If we wanted to be
nasty we could take examples within science where, many times, scientists
have proposed a theory or even facts, only for them to be recanted
at some later date in the light of subsequent research. History is
an ongoing process of learning, and that has applied to religion as
much as to any other subject.
For
religion it has not been a case of new or amended texts being found,
added in or whatever, but of greater understanding of those texts
and particularly in the light of the knowledge of the day. This is
not to say the text changes, but perhaps our understanding of what
it means. Probably one of the classic examples of this was in respect
of those who concluded that the world came into being only five thousand
years ago by making certain assumptions about Scripture. The reality
is we will never know certainly this side of heaven how old the world
is. My own feeling is that those who talk of hundreds of millions
of years are just as much groping around in the dark making lots of
assumptions as those who went for the five thousand year period –
but then I'm not phased by however God did it and however long back
He did it! And by the way, that comment is no more a statement of
faith than the scientist's is of a long period after there was a ‘big
bang' or whatever!
When
we come to religious philosophers many centuries back, let's not write
them off or demean them when they moved into the realm of philosophy
instead of theology, because they were just trying to make sense of
their understanding like any other philosopher. One of the reasons
I dislike the history of philosophy is that it is a record of the
ideas of one after another of these thinkers, and each subsequent
thinker showed the faults in the previous ones. Eventually we have
come to a time when we have all of these stalls laid out and no one
dare claim any of them have the answers. Of course relativistic thinkers
then get upset that anyone dare suggest that perhaps the Creator has
spoken and His declarations may be the only right ones! But please
remember, if you are a relativist and deny there are such things as
absolutes, then you cannot say that I am absolutely wrong!