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 PrintableVersion A history of ChristianityTales to be read with cautionA HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY This review gives an overview of both the author’s book and his six-part BBC TV series. Obviously, the latter is greatly condensed from the former — as one can see from the number of pages, it is a veritable tome! MacCulloch describes himself as a ‘gay man’ who is ‘a candid friend of Christianity’, rather than a believer. Many readers of EN will doubtless be immediately cautious upon hearing that Ð while others will be mystified by the reference to ‘three’ rather than ‘two thousand years’. The answer is that MacCulloch begins by examining Greek philosophy and religion and, with regard to the former, notes that for Plato, ‘the character of true is not merely goodness, but oneness’ (p.32). He also notes that Alexander’s conquests left a linguistic and cultural legacy in the Near East (p.38), and it need hardly be said that the spread of the Greek language as the regional lingua franca was a great aid to the communication of the gospel. The chapter on Greek culture is interesting, but evangelicals will strongly object to much in the second chapter, which is dependent upon liberal biblical criticism. On the whole, however, as befits the work of an Oxford don, this is an essentially objective presentation of church history, as regards both book and TV series, being lucid and interesting as well — goals that scholars do not always achieve. There is simply no comparison with the Channel Four series Christianity — A History which I previously reviewed. Both MacCulloch’s book and TV series are to be highly recommended, though with the caution that they are not pious works of devotion, as with many evangelical historical accounts. At any rate, their lack of either hagiography or polemic make them valuable — because Christian truth depends upon the fact that God has revealed himself in history. Thus, any objective historical presentation is a boon to our cause. Christianity in BaghdadMacCulloch’s greatest contributions come when he refers to areas of church history probably least familiar to Westerners — notably to the influence of Syriac Christianity. In his first programme, MacCulloch notes that the Syriac Orthodox Church is not recognised as ‘orthodox’ by its Greek synonym. Yet, as both book and series demonstrate, Syriac Christianity, whether Monophysite — or ‘Miaphysite’ as MacCulloch prefers (holding the view that Christ has only one nature) — or Nestorian (that Christ has two natures, one wholly human and one wholly divine), played a vital role in church history. Too often Western Christians have a Euro-centric view of church history, yet as MacCulloch demonstrates, at one point there were three great and mutually antagonistic centres of professing Christianity — Rome, Constantinople and Baghdad! The last-mentioned is hard to imagine in our day, yet in the 40 years from the 780s, the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I was leader of about ‘a quarter of the world’s Christians’ — as many as looked to the Roman Pope (pp.266-267). This raises important considerations, which MacCulloch — obviously as an historian — does not contemplate. What if the Protestant Reformation had occurred then and there — in the Middle East, rather than Western Europe? Would the Reformers, while considering the Papacy to be theologically deviant, have designated it as the Antichrist? Where would Islam have fitted into their considerations, especially in the realms of eschatology and relation to the state? The Assyrian Church of the East had a proud record of mission — Timothy consecrated a bishop for Tibet, there is a famous Nestorian monument in China, and recent archaeology suggests that, in the former Japanese capital of Kyoto, a temple started life as a church, and Mongolia ‘is yielding parallel finds’ (p.253). Yet the place where all this started — the Kingdom of Edessa (now south-eastern Turkey) was ethnically cleansed of its Christian inhabitants after the First World War, and the ancient church removed to Syria. History has repeated itself, as, since the Iraq war, multitudes of Arab and Assyrian Christians have also fled to Syria. These issues are no longer of merely academic interest to modern Western Christians. Not only have increasing numbers of Middle Eastern Christians sought asylum in our countries in recent years; the Christological controversies that led to the Chalecedonian-Miaphysite-Nestorian split also had an unintended impact which is still with us — Islam, both in terms of international relations and the burgeoning Muslim communities in the West. The northern Arab Ghassanid kingdom, upon conversion to Christianity, became Miaphysite (pp.236-237). This was the tradition of the Syriac Orthodox Church. MacCulloch comments that the Muslim prayer posture of prostration was borrowed from Syriac Christian practice. Christological disputesEthiopian Christianity was also Miaphysite, although it looked to Coptic Egypt rather than Syria. Another Miaphysite community existed in Najran, near Yemen, which in 523/524 ‘suffered a horrific massacre at the hands of their overlord, Yusuf as’ar Yath’ar of the Yemeni kingdom of Hiyar; in the previous century, his family had converted to Judaism...’ (p.244). This led to Ethiopian intervention on behalf of its co-religionists, and the establishment of a flourishing Arab Christian kingdom — until the great Marib dam failed in the 570s, the same decade Muhammad was born, which destroyed the prosperity of the region, and cost Christianity much of its credibility (p.245). The event is mentioned in Qur’an chapter 34.16, where the collapse is presented as divine judgment for unfaithfulness. The Qur’anic portrayal of Christian Christology is not one that matches any existing variant, and it is possible that it reflects a misunderstanding of the Monophysite position as meaning that Jesus had only one nature — i.e. divine. A further tie with Islam is Nestorian influence. Some Arab tribes embraced Nestorian Christianity (p.246) and, when we consider that there are no (open) native Christians in the Arab Gulf states, it is almost heartbreaking to read that the seventh-century bishop of Nineveh, Isaac, came from Qatar (p.250). MacCulloch doesn’t mention it, but I often point out to my students that the Qur’anic name for Jesus — Isa — doubtless derives from the Nestorian Syriac Isho. Thus, the Qur’an seems to have been influenced by different streams of contemporary Christianity in certain spheres. Hence, a knowledge of what to Westerners are obscure and long-dead Christological controversies are very valuable for congregations interacting with Muslim communities in their midst, and MacCulloch is to be commended for devoting considerable time to explaining such Christological disputes, whereas most popular Western church histories pay comparatively little attention to them. The fact that MacCulloch devotes so much attention to issues which normally receive a fleeting glimpse, save in specialised monographs contributes to making this a worthy tome and the series as being specially interesting — for example, in his examining the growth of Christianity among African-American slaves and their appropriation of Exodus imagery in regard to liberation. He looks at how Roman Catholicism in the Americas not only borrowed from its Iberian experience with Islam, but also managed to accommodate — in some measure — the indigenous culture, destroying with one hand, welcoming with the other. Much attention is given to the Eastern Orthodox experience, notably in Russia, again an issue about which Western evangelicals usually know little, but (given the considerable recent immigration from eastern Europe) one which we can no longer ignore. How churches growMany of us are blessed to be members of congregations with increasing numbers of Africans, and MacCulloch refers to the dramatic growth of the church in sub-Saharan Africa from 10% in 1900 to about 50% of Africans today. He suggests that the withdrawal of many missionaries in WWI catapulted Africans into leadership, which in turn spurred this tremendous expansion. Of course, a similar event occurred in China, where the missionaries had to leave after the Communist take-over, but in the meantime church growth accelerated phenomenally. MacCulloch pays tribute to Hudson Taylor, both for his indigenisation policies and for refusing to take compensation from the Chinese for the Boxer Rebellion, as imposed by the victorious Western governments (p.899). Space does not allow for a more detailed treatment of the book and series, which obviously deals with more common themes of church history, e.g. Jan Hus, Wyclif, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Evangelical Revival and Great Awakening, etc., but the series also showed MacCulloch’s propensity to highlight little-known aspects of church history, notably with respect to Korea. Here MacCulloch shows how the Christians were in the forefront of opposing the Japanese occupation, which stood them well after liberation, and he notes the tremendous expansion of Christianity there. However, he also pointed to some of the dangers associated with it — specifically, how ‘prosperity teaching’ has invaded some aspects of the church, notably among Pentecostals. This reminds us that not everything is rosy about church growth. Obviously, caution is needed whenever we read a secular treatment of church history, but the academic objectivity of this volume and its accompanying series, the depth and breadth of its treatment, especially as regards less familiar aspects of church history makes possession of either or both the book and TV series a very valuable investment. A church history lecturer once said that the subject was both an encouragement and a warning. Both aspects are presented in MacCulloch’s important work. Dr. Anthony McRoy© Evangelicals Now - June 2010 |
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