Christianity and history - In Pursuit of the Past: History and Memory

THE relationship between the Christian faith and history is the central problem of modern theology. Ever since the Enlightenment theologians have tried to reconcile Christianity's longstanding claim to be the truth with modern knowledge about the historical relativity of all human experience and thought.

This enterprise has proved increasingly difficult. In the eighteenth century, Gotthold Lessing, a leading figure of the German Aufkldrung Enlightenment), spoke of the wide and horrendous gulf" that lies between modern man and Christianity in its original form. In the following century this gulf became even wider. Philosophers, theologians and historians understood that all historical reality is specific and relative and that in history there are no absolute norms valid for all individuals and for all periods. But does not Christianity say that jesus Christ occupies an absolute position in history? Should it not claim to be absolutely true and necessary for everyone, irrespective of place and time? The more thinking that has been done about the essence of the Christian faith and the specific nature of historical reality, the wider the gap between faith and history has become.

Central to the Christian faith, as to all religions, is the worship of God. In the traditional language of Western philosophy and theology, strongly marked by the world view of the ancient Greeks and particularly by Aristotelian metaphysics, God 's also referred to as "the

I Absolute". He is thought of as a boundless creative power, conditioned by nothing and eternal, the Creator of the cosmos and then of man, who is a creature of a higher order. God the Creator is seen as the possessor of unlimited sovereignty; He is infinitely superior to His creatures. In Western metaphysics the opposition between God and the world, between transcendence and immanence, between eternity and time, is fundamental. The Absolute is absolute precisely because the finite, the world and humanity do not impinge upon it. Conversely, this created world, the historical world of the finite and the relative, is envisioned as permanently dependent on the Absolute and as deriving its consistency from God alone.

The more God is portrayed as transcendent, as superior to the world, the more faith is regarded as a withdrawal from the relative, as a drawing away from history. For mankind, faith thus consists in placing one's trust in the Absolute. But as the Absolute is timeless, eternal, turning to God is tantamount to turning away from the world and setting oneself at a distance from the finite realm.

The Christian mystics in particular believed that when people pray they are immersed in eternity and withdraw from history, thereby becoming aware of their true, eternal purpose. Viewed in this light, Christian piety always implies a devaluation of history, of the world of relative values.

The concept of history

in the early Church It was from this standpoint that the theologians of the early Church considered the history of humanity and Church history. They reformulated various conceptions of God's sovereignty over world history as found in the jewish tradition (the Old Testament of the Christians) and in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament.

The apostle Paul thus gave a theological interpretation to history according to which there is a close link between the creation of the world and the redemption of humanity. In this scheme of things jesus Christ has a central position: He is the absolute centre of the history of the world, giving meaning and purpose to all human action. Universal history began with the creative act of God. But sin upset the divine order and the world slid into chaos, as demonstrated in particular by the historical disasters visited upon the people of Israel and described in the Old Testament. In

Jesus Christ, a new age of salvation began. Paul

describes this salvation in historical images: it

means the abolition of natural conflict between

man and woman, the end of enmity between peoples,

liberation of slaves from servitude to

their masters and the rebirth of all human beings,

truly freed at last.

Paul's interpretation can thus be defined as

a history of salvation: all human history is

directed towards the return of jesus Christ or the

attainment of salvation in Him. Paul has a telcological

view of history: its goal is the attainment

by all human beings of the salvation already

offered by God to humanity through Christ.

For this reason, the Church in his view is at

the centre of history. It is the institution that

brings us the news of salvation in Christ.

Through its action we draw nearer to the end purpose

of history according to God, the return

of Christ and the establishment of His universal

kingdom of peace. Seen from this standpoint, the

history of the world and the political history of

states are without importance. Only the action

of the Church is decisive for true progress

towards the kingdom of God.

The early Christians lived in the faith that

Christ would soon return and accomplish the

final salvation of history. Accordingly, the

theologians of the early Church did not at first

pay much attention to the details of Church history.

It was only through the persecution of the

Christians by the Roman empire and the subsequent

triumph of Christianity over the empire,

expressed symbolically by the baptism of

Constantine in 337 AD, that the history of the

Church became an important subject of theological

reflection.

A first synthesis of the history of the expansion

of Christianity is provided by the early

fourth-century historian and theologian Eusebius

of Caesarea, whose Exclestastical History is still a

document of capital importance. The way in

which Eusebius links specific events in Church

history to an all-embracing theological interpretation

of universal history served for centuries as

an example for the Catholic historians of the

Church.

His interpretation was particularly decisive

in two respects. First, the history of the Church

begins with the birth and works of jesus of

Nazareth. The whole of jewish and non - Christian history until then were but God's

preparation for this event essential to the salvation

of humankind. The pre-Christian religions

are seen as preparing the way for the reception

of Christ's message. Ill fact, Christianity was not

a new religion but eternal religion, which, before

Christ, had not been wholly revealed. judaism

and Greek religion are not considered as "foreign

religions" but as forms of an unrealized Christianity.

History before the coming of Christ is

also in this account integrated into the history

of the Church.

Secondly, Eusebius sees the history of the world and the Church as a constant struggle between Good and Evil, God and the Devil. The function of history is to record the continual struggle between the good, who remain faithful to God and His Church, and the bad, who follow Satan and oppose the Church. He is profoundly convinced that God will come to the assistance of His Church in all its struggles against external

but also and especially against heretics, enemies, and that divine truth will prevail. The history of the Church is seen by Eusebius as that of an ever growing power, which he attributes to the greater proximity of the kingdom of God. Church history thus becomes the axis of universal history.

The sixteenth-century leaders of the Reformation especially Martin Luther and John Calvin, radically challenged the Catholic vision of the Church as an increasingly powerful, triumphant institution. The Reformation grew out of a movement of protest against the established Church. Against the authority of the Pope and the priests' dominion over souls, it invoked "a Christian's freedom" (Luther). Human salvation lay not in the Church but in the word of God alone, which was accessibile to everyone through the Holy Scriptures. For the reformers, "a Christian's freedom" meant that less value was attached to the Church. The institution of the Church took second place to the pious individual.

This theological restriction placed on the Church meant at the same time that greater recognition was accorded to the intrinsic value of the world. True Christian faith was exemplified not in a separate pious existence, sealed off from worldly concerns, but in the actual circumstances of life, where human beings had been set by God. In the eyes of the reformers, living according to one's faith meant above all saying "yes" to the world; it meant being actively and enthusiastically involved in the world.

The reformers also profoundly changed prevailing attitudes to the history of the Church. The institution was criticized. Its history, as written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Protestant historians, was intended to legitimize and bolster the rights of Protestantism against the authoritarian nature of the Church of Rome. Eusebius' history of triumph was replaced by an account of the internal decomposition of the Church. The more powerful it had grown, the

had become detached from the true faith. more it The distinction made by Eusebius between bearers of authority and heretics, between good Christians and enemies of God, was overturned: in many cases it was the ecclesiastical authorities that were the enemies of Christ. In the history of the Church a central role was now assigned to the plous who had transmitted the fundamental truths of Christianity.

Under the influence of the Reformation, the history of the Church became a medium for a scientific and critical appraisal of the received tradition of the Church. Not only were historians critical of its attempted domination, but they were also increasingly sceptical about the sources invoked by the Church in an effort to legitimize its power and to base the supremacy of the Pope's authority upon that of the emperor. This criticism had an ideological colouring. The concern was to release the ordinary Christian from a state of false servitude vis-'a-vis the Church. Through such criticism and through intensive exegesis of the Holy Gospels, the Protestant history of the Church paved the way for modern historical and critical investigation, which took root during the Enlightenment and continued to develop in the nineteenth century.

The absolute nature

of Christianity and

the history of religions The Enlightenment marked a radical break in the interpretation of Christianity and of its history. During the period of European expansion, when the pull of other countries and cultures was being felt, Western intellectuals discovered a multiplicity of religions and religious traditions of which they had previously been unaware. They had to recognize that, from the point of view of history, Christianity was but one religion among others. At first they continued to claim, dogmatically, that Christianity alone was the true religion, all the others being false forms of religious consciousness or at least incomplete representations of the truth as compared to that of Christianity.

However as European Intellectuals became more interested in the history of the nonChristian religions, the more clearly they perceived numerous affinities and mutual 1 between Christianity and other religions. From then on they had to interpret the history of Christianity with reference to the universal history of religions. What consequences does this attitude have for Christianity's long-established claim to possess the truth? Should not a modern historian refute the idea that the Christian message is valid for all human beings?

This question was a particular source of conflict in German Protestantism, starting in the eighteenth century. Philosophers and theologians associated with what was known as German idealism-Schleiermacher, Schelling and Hegel for instance-attempted to meet the challenge of the new critical approach to history by interpreting Christianity as "the absolute religion". Christianity was thus reincorporated into a universal history of religions without the abandonment of its traditional claim to hold the truth. On the one hand, Christianity was but one religion among others and had to be understood as a specific historical instance of a universal phenomenona-religion. the other, it stood out from all the others insofar as it was only in Christianity that the universal goal of all religion-the reconciliation of God and mankind-had been fully achieved.

Once a universal concept of religion had been established, supposedly embracing all the forms of religion that had so far emerged in the history of humanity, these were shown to be linked to one another in accordance with a historical process based on the principles of evolution. The history of religions, ranging back from primitive religions, through natural religions all, the way to culture-religions, was thus seen as a process whose ultimate aim was the effective realization of the universal essence of religion.

This evolutionist way of thinking was widespread throughout nineteenth-century Europe, where Christianity was regarded as the highest form of culture-religion, like the religion of freedom or of the personality. It was identified, more or less directly, with the universal concept of religion. The success of this interpretation was due to the fact that it enabled historical and critical account to be taken of the multiplicity of religions without in any way renouncing Christianity's claim to superiority. This model could thus serve to justify Western imperialism.

Since the nineteenth century, however, the rapid advance of knowledge in the history of religions has put paid to the idealistic presupposition that the course of history is determined by an unchanging transcendental reason. The more that historians have recognized the specificity of individual religions, the more they have abandoned attempts to understand the history of religions as a single evolutionary process and to encompass all religions in the same concept. The idealistic belief in the basic oneness of the many religions gave way to a pluralistic vision of history in which the main focus of attention was no longer their alleged sameness but their individuality.

A truly critical approach to the science of history meant then that the concept of "absolute religion" had to be discarded as a dogmatic or, in other words, a historical notion. The implications for the Christian religion were keenly debated in the early years of this century, in Europe and the United States.

The German theologian Ernst Troeltsch, a liberal Protestant, played an important role in this debate. In a famous lecture published in 1902, entitled The Absoluteness of Christianity, Troeltsch abandoned the concept of "absolute religion". He assigned a relative supreme value" to Christianity while recognizing that this could not be demonstrated by a strictly historical method. He did not dispute that Christianity claimed to represent the truth, but for him there was only one truth, which found expression in countless forms of religion.

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