“It was Christianity that became Europe’s unifying ideology and inspired figures from Charlemagne to Columbus.”
In 2005, the late conservative writer Lawrence Auster published a response to one of his critics. The critic argued that Christianity had added little or nothing of value to Western culture. Auster disagreed. Since this specific question is seldom discussed, the dispute seems worth revisiting even 20 years after the fact.
Auster’s challenger advances roughly the argument one might expect, highlighting Western civilization’s beginnings in Greece and Rome and casting the Dark Ages as a regressive interlude of Christian obscurantism. The Renaissance’s subsequent rediscovery of the classical heritage is what made European civilization great again, he says. In that sense, his thesis is not too original. He does, however, make a few points which seem to cast fresh light on parts of Western history. Thus, he muses that “Shakespeare is littered with [references] to Jove, Jupiter, Niobe, Nero, Alexander, but very few to any Christian heroes.” True enough, though Christianity certainly belongs to the “Elizabethan World Picture” which so frequently suffuses the Bard’s work.
Auster’s rebuttal is more interesting, especially in light of historian Henry Bamford Parkes’s 1969 volume The Divine Order, a chronicle of European history. Auster would include The Divine Order in a “reading list” of “personal favorites and recommended books” the following year. Despite this endorsement, some of his arguments run counter to Parkes’s account of European history.
Auster emphasizes that the path to the relative flourishing of the High Middle Ages was paved by religiously inspired military action: “the Catholics of Europe, led by the Carolingians, were able to drive back the Arab Moslem invaders from France in the early 8th century, subdue the gangster realm of the Avars in Eastern Europe, and rescue the Papacy from the barbarian Lombards.” Auster’s mention of the Muslim invasion is problematic since Islam is partly based on Christianity. Would a similar creed have emerged among the Arabs, and inspired similar invasions, if Christianity had never existed? Perhaps, perhaps not.
Moreover, the Carolingian and similar campaigns may have been driven by Christian piety but surely owed much to warlike pre-Christian customs, too. Parkes notes that Charlemagne’s “long series of wars” was “plainly motivated…by concern for the security and order of Western Christendom.” Yet Charlemagne also “remained a Germanic chieftain” devoted to Germanic traditions of governance. He “esteemed the barbaric heritage,” sought to have tribal poems recorded for posterity and adhered to “easygoing sexual mores” inherited from pre-Christian times.
Theologian James C. Russell makes similar points about the persistence of pre-Christian culture in The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. Like Parkes, Russell notes that the Christian faith was adapted to Germanic peoples’ culture and beliefs in order to facilitate their conversion. The religion thereby became more life-affirming and bellicose, an effect which Russell sees reflected even in the crusades. More to the point, he believes that the adaptation of Christianity to Germanic ways was already observable among the Carolingian Franks, whose ideology stemmed from a “folk-centred religiopolitical reinterpretation of Christianity.” Among other things, Christianity had become, for them, an ethnocentric faith akin to the tribal religions of earlier generations. Thus, some Franks called themselves God’s people (“populus Dei”). Thus, it would seem that the Catholic faith which Auster praises in the Carolingians partly consisted of Germanic ideas under a fresh coat of Christian paint.
Fantasy author Fritz Leiber seems to have dramatized the Germanic reimagining of Christianity in his short story “Lean Times in Lankhmar.” Therein, the northern warrior Fafhrd joins a pacifistic religion centered on the god Issek, who was tortured and killed on a rack (not a cross, but the allusion is unmistakable). Being a key member of the fledgling faith, the barbarian gradually modifies some of its teachings. “As delivered over and over by Fafhrd,” narrates Leiber, “the History of Issek…gradually altered…into something considerably more like the saga of a Northern hero.” While never literally fighting, Fafhrd’s version of the deity had strolled across “fileds of poisoned sword-points” and “had broken seven racks before he began seriously to weaken.” This is reminiscent of medieval Germanic Christian works such as The Dream of the Rood, which, in Russell’s words, “portray[s] Christ as a warrior lord.”
“Our Constitution,” insists Auster, “with its separation of powers and checks and balances, is derived from the Christian idea of original sin.” This does not comport at all with Parkes’s history. Rule by consent of an assembly is among the Germanic customs Parkes considers Charlemagne to have maintained. Traditionally, the Germanic king was elected by the tribe’s “chief men”; had only limited power to act without consulting them; and could not alter “the tribal laws.” Later, autocracy failed to arise in medieval German states because the nobility would not permit it. Ultimately, “Germanic practice combined with Greek and Christian theory to produce the Western concept of limited…government.” It seems evident, one might add, that the “Germanic practice” was more decisive than the “Christian theory.” After all, theology was also used to justify absolutism.
Indeed, Americans prior to and during the Constitution’s writing were cognizant of a Germanic intellectual pedigree to their ideals. In his 2004 book The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, political scientist Eric Kaufmann explains that the American revolutionary movement included prominent voices who argued that the freedom-loving tradition they represented was rooted in their Anglo-Saxon origins. This notion of freedom as a characteristically English value inherited from Anglo-Saxon times was itself old, going back to 16th-century England. Strikingly, Kaufmann quotes Thomas Jefferson’s reference to “Hengist and Horsa, the Saxon chiefs from whom we [Americans] claim the honour of being descended, and whose political principles and form of government we have assumed.” George Washington and Benjamin Franklin held similar beliefs, and such views retained wide currency into the 20th century.
This naturally also casts doubt on Auster’s assertion that “our very notion of individualism” comes from “Judaism and Christianity.”
Furthermore, Auster states that “it was Christianity…which, over centuries, slowly turned the rough Germanic barbarian warriors of Europe into civilized, peaceful, and law-abiding men.” This is not at all what Parkes says. For Parkes, “the early institutions of the new civilization,” meaning the West after antiquity, “were mostly of barbarian origin, as were their early art forms.” The civilizing process was not a Christian development but, rather, a centuries-long refinement of the barbarian heritage. Parkes singles out the 12th century as a high point in medieval history, observing that this was the time “of the chansons de geste and the poems of the troubadours” (italics original). Christian values were wholly absent from these works, which celebrated combat. At the same time, by highlighting “the necessity of self-control,” they achieved “a profoundly civilizing effect.” Later, Parkes reminds us that the troubadours developed an image of romantic love as something refined rather than “a mere appetite.” According to him, the feudal elites derived their eventual moral betterment from such essentially non-Christian literature, whereas church morals were too saintly in theory, and oftentimes too permissive in practice, to civilize the Dark Ages.
Auster also writes that Christianity “turned barbarian tribes into Christian nations.” This seems to imply that the transition from tribal existence to nation-states was owed to Christianity. Yet, as the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “the Scandinavian states emerged as unified kingdoms in the 9th century.” That was before they were Christianized. Christianity may have aided in some cases of nation-building but hardly looks to have been a necessary condition for it.
Other Western ideas are more particularly Christian. The concept of original sin is one, and it offered at least one thinker a philosophical basis for supporting economic freedom. Historian of liberalism Laurent Dobuzinskis writes that Pierre Le Pesant de Boisguilbert, an early defender of free-market economics, based his “conceptions of the social and economic order” on “Jansenist philosophy, itself rooted in Augustine’s theology.” More specifically, he was influenced by “the Jansenists’ account of how sinners can learn to live peacefully together.” However, other intellectual currents contributed to the novel acceptance of free enterprise, too. These included nationalism (as sociologist Liah Greenfeld has shown) and, more obviously, the Enlightenment (Dobuzinskis mentions David Hume in particular).
Some Christian organizations contributed to scientific exploration, too. Historian of science Toby Huff praises the Jesuits in particular, for their own research as well as their efforts to transmit Western knowledge to China. Then again, Friedrich Nietzsche argued that the Jesuits’ intellectual achievements stemmed from their embrace of the competitive spirit. This positive attitude toward competition had predominated in pagan Greece, “whereas modern educators fear nothing as much as the unchaining of the so-called ambition.” Still, the Jesuits were undoubtedly a pious Christian group. Whether such contributions as theirs outweigh the Church’s repression of science―forever exemplified by its treatment of Galileo―is far more dubious.
Importantly, Auster is correct to say that “many classical works were preserved,” thanks to Christianity. Monasteries did rescue numerous ancient texts from oblivion. That this was a genuine accomplishment is clear from the fact that even historian Richard Carrier, one of the Christian faith’s most passionate and perceptive critics, does not deny either that monasteries were significant in preserving ancient texts or that this was a historically consequential fact. Rather, in his 2017 book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire, Carrier’s rebuttal to those who praise Christianity for this achievement seems to boil down to two points. Firstly, he argues that, while monasteries preserved some ancient scientific texts, medieval Christianity put up “obstacles to scientific advancement” (emphasis original). Secondly, only a fraction of ancient texts was preserved by the monks. During the Dark Ages, he says, “‘science’ almost entirely consisted of simply repeating, often incorrectly, what someone else wrote centuries before. As well as having forgotten almost all of it. And then just making the rest up.”
In short, the argument is that Christianity did not do enough to preserve ancient texts while also creating roadblocks to the further practice of science. Those may be fair criticisms, but the transmission of texts still stands out as a positive contribution during a time when, as Parkes narrates, Europe’s economy was crumbling and literacy and education were receding. Had the classical textual heritage been completely lost, it seems dubious how much of a scientific tradition Europe would have retained even absent any Christian impediments to scholarship. After all, economic collapse and the disintegration of public order, which followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire, are generally injurious to science.
Another caveat is that, as Parkes notes, respect for the intellectual products of antiquity was initially controversial among Christians. Thus, “early Christians” and “some later churchmen” were “suspicious of classical learning.” But by the early Dark Ages such learning had mostly won Christianity’s respect.
By now, a common theme has emerged: Many of the ways of thinking for which Christianity is praised were not original to it but were absorbed from the milieus in which Christians found themselves. Christianity’s most valuable intrinsic feature was probably its ability to bring people together, organize them, and rouse their passions. It was not that it put forth good ideas of its own but, rather, that it acted as a decently receptive vessel that could absorb what good ideas already existed in Europe and get people committed to them. It also inspired Europeans in less intellectual ways, providing motivation for military feats like Charlemagne’s, as well as for later voyages of discovery. Christopher Columbus’s personal piety, for instance, was a principal motive for his voyage to the New World.
The capacity to inspire and unite is not unique to Christianity. In spite of his avowed Catholic bias, political scientist Charles Murray demonstrates this in his 2003 book Human Accomplishment. Murray writes that, due to “the intense and unremitting…effort…typically required to do great things,” such extraordinary achievements are likelier to come about in environments which impart a sense of “vocation” and “purpose.” It is thus helpful to have a belief system which gives people meaningful, this-worldly values to pursue while telling them that they can attain those goals through self-directed action. Historically, Europe’s belief systems were better suited for these functions than those found in other parts of the globe. This was true well before Christ. For instance, Murray spotlights the ancient Greek worldview wherein “acting as a rational individual is the essence of living a human life” (emphasis original). This paradigm underpinned Greek excellence “and laid the foundation for subsequent Western thought.”
Still, while ancient Greek culture certainly could be transplanted to other locations―think of the Hellenistic period―the fact remains that, as Parkes describes, classical civilization was in decay following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. It was Christianity that became Europe’s unifying ideology and inspired figures from Charlemagne to Columbus.
Note, though, that Murray allows for the possibility of later creeds offering as much of a sense of purpose as Christianity. In his view, “Enlightenment Humanism” provided nearly as strong a sense of purpose as “Reformation Protestantism” and even more than “Post-Luther Catholicism.” Why? Because “the Enlightenment’s passionate commitment to reason was close to religious.” For Murray, it was only the later spread of moral relativism that robbed Western “creative elites” of their sense of purpose.
Christianity’s intrinsic capacity to inspire and impassion served European civilization by motivating many people to do great things. In terms of content, though, nearly everything good in Christianity arose independently and was only subsequently incorporated into the religion. Auster fails to recognize this and credits his religion with a slew of ideas and advances it did not generate. Interestingly, he opines that “Western civilization is.. an amalgamation of (1) the culture of the destroyed classical world, (2) the Christian religion, and (3) the cultures of the Northern barbarians.” He seems to have received this notion mainly from Parkes: In his reading list, he explains that The Divine Order is “where I first encountered the idea of Western culture as the merging of the Mediterran[e]an classic civilization with the culture of the Northern Barbarians.” However, it appears he never fully internalized Parkes’s analysis.
Simon Maass is a writer living in Germany. His work has previously appeared in publications such as Providence, VoegelinView, and Cultural Revue. He holds a degree in International Relations from the University of St Andrews and writes on various topics in politics, religion, and literature.
