THE STORY OF CHRISTIANITY

A HISTORY OF 2,000 YEARS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

DAVID BENTLEY HART

First published as an illustrated edition in Great Britain in 2009 by Quercus

This is the ebook edition published in 2013 by Quercus

Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2009 David Bentley Hart

The moral right of David Bentley Hart to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 978 1 84916 902 8
Print ISBN 978 1 78087 752 5

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

David Bentley Hart is the author of several books, among them The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth and The Devil and Pierre Gernet. He has taught philosophy, religious studies, and theology at Duke University and the University of Virginia. He is the winner of the Church of England’s Ramsey Prize for 2011.

Introduction

Needless to say, no single volume can possibly contain the entire story of Christianity – a religion that spans 20 centuries of history, that has reached every quarter of the globe, that has assumed an incalculable variety of institutional and cultural forms, and that today is the faith (at least nominally) of one-third of the human race. What it is possible to do in a book of this sort, however, is to provide a broad picture of Christian history, with as much detail as space allows, without allowing any single aspect to overwhelm the narrative as a whole. This is not necessarily an easy ambition to realize. Most Christians, after all, are conscious of only a small portion of Christian tradition, belief and practice, and rarely have cause to investigate the many forms of their faith with which they are not immediately familiar. It is quite possible to be an Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Evangelical, Anglican, Coptic, Chaldean, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox or Malankaran Christian (to name a few of the many possibilities), perfectly aware of the tenets of one’s own tradition, and still know very little indeed of the larger scope of Christian thought and piety. And it is always a temptation when writing a work like this to allow oneself to concentrate so exclusively on a single version of Christianity – say, the Western communions – that the sheer richness of Christian tradition and experience is hidden from view.

It is a temptation, though, that should be resisted, because the true story of Christianity – when told in something like its full breadth – is immeasurably fascinating. It is even, one might say, rather exotic. A faith that began in Roman-occupied Judaea, as a small and fugitive faction within Judaism, and that was legally proscribed for centuries, even at times on pain of death, persisted, grew, thrived and finally ‘conquered’ the empire that had sought to exterminate it. Then, over many centuries and in many lands, it became the vital source from which new civilizations sprang and developed and drew constant nourishment. At times, its geographical range expanded mightily, at others contracted perilously. At times, the church proved heroically true to its deepest moral principles; at others, inexcusably traitorous to them. But, at the end of the tale (at least to this point), this faith that began in such fragility, and that became so powerful – even though its temporal power has now receded in its historic homelands – is the most widespread and diverse of all religions, and is rapidly taking root in cultures very different from those in which it was born and in which it once flourished, and is assuming configurations that could not have been anticipated a century ago.

To tell this story in a way that does proper justice to its improbability and variety, one must consider not only its larger features, but its more minute as well; not only its most resplendent and historically successful expressions, but its most obscure and frequently forgotten; not only its most familiar forms, but its strangest. I have, at any rate, attempted in what follows to give something like equal time to the churches of the East and of the West, and to accord attention to the smaller, ancient Christian communities of Asia and Africa, and to take note of those contemporary communions (like the Chinese house churches) that exist somewhat at the margins of the Christian world. If I have failed in this in any respect, it is because certain requirements of space proved impossible to defy.

The story of Christianity is not merely the story of a religion indigenous to Western civilization; in a very real sense, it is the story of that civilization itself. One cannot really understand the values that inform those cultures that were originally conceived in the womb of Christendom without understanding the faith that created them. Even in nations where an explicit devotion to Christian faith is on the wane, the Christian understanding of what it is to be human continues to shape imaginations and desires at the profoundest levels, and to determine much of what we hold most dear and many of the moral expectations we have of ourselves and others. For this reason alone, the story of Christianity is one we should all wish to know better.

That said, perhaps one caution should be kept in mind. A written history of Christianity is concerned – of necessity – with history, which is to say with social and political matters: nations and rulers, states and institutions, compromises and wars. This being so, one might object that a book of this sort cannot really record the story of Christianity as such – of the beliefs, ideas and values that Christian faith instills in individual men and women – but can, at most, relate a series of episodes in the evolution of cultures and institutions that happen to have been populated by persons who happened to be baptized. This is a perfectly fair objection. Perhaps the only true story of Christianity is that which unfolds in the hearts and minds of believers. Even so, these hidden movements of the spirit have made themselves manifest, even if only fitfully, in the outward events of Christian history. Thus, a book like this perhaps still has the power to illuminate that other more secret and mysterious story, whose discrete moments occur everywhere and nowhere, and which cannot otherwise be told.

David Bentley Hart

The Abiding Glory: the People of Israel

The books of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) come from many periods, are written in diverse styles and are the work of many authors. They do not, therefore, constitute a simple, continuous narrative. Yet, taken as a whole, they can be said to tell a single, great story – the epic of the Glory of God come to dwell on earth.

This Glory, which later Jewish tradition called the Shekhinah (meaning ‘that which rests’ or ‘that which abides’), was conceived of as being nothing less than the real, mysterious and overwhelming presence of God himself. At times, the Glory would descend (often in a cloud of impenetrable darkness) upon the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred gold-plated chest in which the tablets of the law of Moses were kept. The Ark itself, as the throne of God, was initially housed within the Tabernacle (or ‘tent of meeting’) prepared for it by Moses, but was later transferred to the inner sanctuary of the Temple built for it in Jerusalem by King Solomon.

The Calling of Israel and the Age of the Patriarchs

The Bible also recounts God’s election of a chosen people and describes how this choice inevitably becomes ever narrower. In other words, God initially creates all mankind for communion with him, but eventually, as a result of human sin, decides instead to fashion a particular people for himself, with whom he forges an unbreakable bond so as to establish his home on Earth among them. Israel thus becomes the object of special divine attention, which is likened in scripture to the love of a father for his child or of a husband for his wife. The story is marked by episodes of faithfulness and betrayal by Israel, and mercy and anger on God’s part. The relationship is ruptured and restored; Israel is sometimes seduced by strange gods, only to return to God for forgiveness. God punishes and pardons, his Glory departs and returns – but he never abandons his people.

This is the sacred story of the Jews, in the light of which Hebrew scripture interprets all the concrete events of Israel’s history. By the time of Jesus’ birth, that story already spanned nearly two millennia, beginning in the age of the Patriarchs, when the ancestors of the Jews were merely a tribe of semi-nomads. The first tribal patriarch was Abraham (originally named Abram), whom God summoned from the Mesopotamian city of Ur, to journey to an unknown land where his descendants would become a great nation. This was God’s special covenant with Abraham: one that was, so to speak, written in the very flesh of the community, through the circumcision of all the males of the tribe. Abraham was succeeded as patriarch by his son Isaac, whom Abraham’s wife Sarah miraculously conceived and bore when she was well beyond child-bearing age. Isaac in turn was succeeded by his son Jacob. The patriarchal narratives end with the migration of Israel into Egypt, under the protection of Isaac’s son Joseph, who had been sold into slavery as a youth by his jealous elder brothers, but who had risen to a position of immense authority in Pharaoh’s court.

Prophets and Kings

The protection under which Israel sheltered, however, was withdrawn after the time of Joseph, and the people languished in slavery for many centuries, until around the 14th or 13th century BC, when the prophet and legislator Moses arose to lead them to freedom. It was to Moses that God for the first time revealed his ‘proper’ name, the mysterious ‘tetragrammaton’ YHWH, which the Book of Exodus claims derives from the even more mysterious phrase ‘Eyeh asher Eyeh’: ‘I will be as I will be’. It was under Moses that the Jewish priesthood and the rites of the Tabernacle were established, and through Moses that God gave Israel the law: the body of religious, moral and civil ordinances that was to guide the Israelites.

Subsequent narratives tell of Israel’s settlement and conquest of Canaan, the ‘Promised Land’, after a delay of 40 years and the death of Moses. For nearly two centuries thereafter, Israel remained a loose federation of 12 distinct tribes, governed by judges, but before the beginning of the 10th century BC it became a monarchy, ruled first by King Saul (d. c. 1007 BC), and then by King David (d. c.965 BC); the latter was a brilliant warrior and leader, who forged Israel into a united military and cultural power. It was he who brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem from the Tabernacle in Shiloh. Yet it fell to David’s son, the legendarily wise and wealthy King Solomon (d. c.928 BC), to build the great Temple, in whose inner chamber – the Holy of Holies – the Ark was finally placed. Thereafter, no one but the High Priest was permitted to enter into the ‘Presence’ and he only once each year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

By today’s standards, the Temple built in Jerusalem by Solomon – at around 100 ft (30 m) long by 35 ft (11 m) wide, and with a roof 50 ft (15 m) above the ground – would not be an enormous edifice; but, for its time (c.957 BC), it was a major accomplishment. Within its immediate precincts, there was a great forecourt with a large altar for burnt offerings, as well as a mysterious object called ‘the molten sea’ (perhaps a large bronze basin, used for ritual lustrations).

The building itself comprised three major sections: at its entrance there was a vestibule or ’Ulam, before which was set a second altar of bronze and within which stood two huge detached pillars called Jachin and Boaz; beyond that was the Hekhal or Holy Space, the principal place of worship, containing yet three more altars, one of which was situated at the entrance of the inmost chamber; and finally the Devir or Holy of Holies, where the Ark resided, hidden from human eyes, and where the divine Shekhinah was believed to dwell.

The Temple was opulently furnished, its doors and lintels were highly ornate, and its inner walls were fashioned from carved cedar and covered with beaten gold. In the Holy of Holies, overshadowing the Ark, stood statues of two great cherubim – heavenly beings, probably with four wings and both human and animal features – which were carved from olive wood.

For all its grandeur, Solomon’s reign was largely a failure. His tolerance of foreign cults – in order to indulge his many foreign wives – not only hastened his own demise, but also caused the schism of the Jews into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel endured for two centuries, but fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC and ultimately faded from history; and so it is from the latter that later Judaism descends.

This was also the age of the prophets, men called by God to proclaim justice for the poor and oppressed, to denounce idolatry, to warn of divine retribution, and to announce the approach of a day when the God of Israel would draw all the world under his merciful governance.

A Subject People

The kingdom of Judah was overrun by the Babylonians in 587–586 BC; the Temple was destroyed and stripped of its treasures (though, apparently, the Ark was no longer among them) and much of the population was led away into exile as captives. In 539 BC, however, Babylon fell to Persia, and the Persian king Cyrus permitted those Jews who wished to do so to return to Israel and rebuild the Temple – a task completed in 516–515 BC. In 332 BC, with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, the age of Hellenistic – or Late Greek – Judaism began.

Under the rule of the Greek-Egyptian dynasty of the Ptolemies, the Jews were granted freedom of worship, and for more than 150 years, Jewish culture, in Palestine and abroad, peacefully assimilated Hellenistic culture. In 198 BC, however, the Greek-Syrian Seleucid dynasty conquered Israel, and in 168 BC King Antiochus IV Epiphanes set about eradicating Judaism. He desecrated the Temple, instituted pagan sacrifices in Jerusalem, and mercilessly persecuted any Jews who resisted.

A Jewish revolt, initially led by Judas Maccabeus of the Hasmonean dynasty forced the Seleucid regime to recognize Judaism and permit reconsecration of the Temple in 164 BC. Thirty years later, the Hasmoneans even succeeded in winning independence for Judaea – a condition that lasted for a century, until the Roman conquest of 63 BC.

Jesus Christ, Born of the Jews

In the New Testament, the theme of the descent of the divine Glory to earth continues, but in a radically different key; for, in Christian thought, God comes to dwell among human beings not merely in the awesome but intangible form of the Shekhinah, but as a concrete presence, a living man.

Thus, in the Gospel of Luke, when the angel of the annunciation tells Mary of the conception of Jesus in her womb, his language clearly recalls the cloud of darkness that used to attend the Lord’s entry into his house: ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee … ’ (Luke 1:35). The Gospel of John proclaims that, in becoming flesh, the divine Son literally ‘tabernacled’ among us – ‘and we beheld his Glory, the Glory of the only begotten of the Father’ (John 1:14). Jesus likens himself to the Temple. And all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) tell of Christ’s Transfiguration, when the Glory of his divinity briefly became visible through the veil of his humanity.

The Centre of History

For the early Church, the entire history of God’s indwelling had culminated in the coming of Christ, who was nothing less than the ‘express image’ of God’s essence, the very ‘brightness of his Glory’ (Hebrews 1:3). Already in Hebrew scripture, God’s Glory had at times been portrayed as a kind of heavenly person, resembling a man (most notably in the Book of Ezekiel); but, according to Christian belief, that Glory had now actually become a man, through whom the radiance of the divine had been brought into intimate contact with human nature. As a result, all human beings were now able to become vessels of the divine presence, and Christians looked forward to a day when God’s Glory would be revealed in those who had been joined to Christ, and would transfigure the whole of creation (Romans 8:18-21). For Christians, Jesus of Nazareth was, then, the centre of all human and cosmic history, and the consummation of all God’s purposes in creation.

To those outside the circle of faith, of course, the sheer extravagance of the claims made for Christ’s significance by Christians could scarcely have seemed more absurd. Certainly, during the early centuries of the Church, pagan critics of the gospel never failed to point out how peculiar it was for God to have chosen so obscure and humble a form for his final revelation to humanity – an itinerant preacher born among a subject people, neither noble of birth nor great amid the councils of the mighty, who lived his brief life far from the centre of the empire, and who numbered no philosophers among his friends and associates. But Christians positively rejoiced in God’s desire to confound the expectations of the powerful, and to reveal himself among the poor, the nameless, the despised and the forgotten.

Not that Judaea was a backwater. At the time of Christ’s birth, the Jews had endured centuries of foreign subjugation – by Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome – but had also, as a result, been profoundly influenced by foreign cultures, and had established communities throughout the wider Hellenistic and Roman world. Many aspects of the Judaism of the synagogues evolved during the Babylonian exile, when there was no Temple and there were no sacrifices, and public prayer and study of the law and the prophets became Judaism’s chief religious activities.

Moreover, various beliefs typical of Persian Zoroastrianism – life after death, resurrection, the Day of Judgment, the great cosmic struggle between good and evil – had been absorbed into the faith of most Jews, and that of the influential sect of the Pharisees (though other Jews, such as the Saducees, rejected such beliefs). For three centuries, moreover, Judaism – in Judaea and throughout the Jewish Diaspora (the dispersed Jewish community abroad) – had been shaped by Greek culture and thought. Jesus’ older contemporary, Philo of Alexandria (c.15 BC–c.AD 50), for example, was a typical product of the Diaspora: he employed Greek methods of exegesis to interpret Hebrew scripture, borrowed freely from Greek metaphysics, and even elaborated a theory of the divine Logos – a secondary expression of God, or eternal ‘Son’, through whom God creates and communicates with the world. All of these ‘foreign’ influences were reflected either in the ministry of Christ or in the Church’s understanding of his identity.

The Son Of Man

In the Gospels, Jesus frequently speaks – somewhat enigmatically – of ‘the Son of Man’. Occasionally, he uses this phrase to refer to a heavenly emissary of God who will be sent to earth on Judgement Day to judge the nations and gather the righteous into the Kingdom of God. At other times, however, he clearly applies it to himself in his earthly mission.

In Hebrew scripture, ‘son of man’ (ben Adam) is generally quite a mundane phrase. It often denotes little more than ‘human being’. In the book of Job and in the Psalms, it is simply a poetic circumlocution for ‘man’: ‘… man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm’ (Job 25:6). It is also the name by which God (or God’s messenger) addresses the prophet Ezekiel, in order constantly to remind the prophet that he is only mortal clay.

In the Book of Daniel, however, in a vision of the final judgment, Daniel describes the Ancient of Days upon his throne, and tells of ‘one like a Son of Man’ arriving amid the clouds of heaven and approaching the throne and being given everlasting dominion over all the nations of the earth.

In the New Testament, both meanings are present, in some cases simultaneously. There is something exquisitely appropriate in this. In the Christian understanding of Jesus, after all, exaltation and abasement – the heavenly and the earthly – are inseparable. Inas much as the phrase ‘Son of Man’ can serve to indicate both the humility of Christ in assuming mortal flesh and also the glory of Christ as the divine Lord of history, it elegantly comprises within itself what for Christians is the central mystery of the incarnation.

The Ministry of Christ

Little can be said of the early life of Jesus. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke tell of his miraculous conception and birth of the Virgin Mary; Matthew tells of the visit of the Magi, the flight of the holy family to Egypt, and their later return to Nazareth; Luke tells of Christ’s birth in a stable, his adoration in the manger by shepherds, his presentation in the Temple and his dialogue – at the age of 12 – with the scholars of the Temple courtyard. Nothing else is known of his early years.

The Gospel accounts of Jesus himself all begin in earnest with his baptism in the Jordan by his cousin John, which inaugurated his ministry; this, in fact, is where the Gospels of Mark and John begin their narratives (though in the latter case, only after a prologue ‘in eternity’). According to the Synoptic Gospels, Christ first went into the wilderness for 40 days, to pray and fast, and to resist Satan’s attempts to sway him from his mission; he then began gathering disciples – including the inner 12, the Apostles – and travelling through the Judaean countryside.

In the context of their time, Christ’s teachings combined elements at once familar and strange. He was, in many ways, like any other rabbi: he expounded upon the scriptures, recalled men and women to the central precepts of the law, and proclaimed God’s love for the poor, the oppressed and the forsaken. And he was, apparently, a master of ‘dialectical’ instruction, being especially adept at answering queries – whether sincere or hostile – by posing complementary questions that induced his questioners to answer the questions for themselves. Yet the main thrust of his mission was to proclaim the imminent approach of the Day of the Lord and the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. As such, his message was one of drastic urgency.

These aspects of Christ’s teachings are less remarkable than the manner in which he indicated the Kingdom’s nature and scope – not only, that is, his frequent use of elliptical metaphors and evocative parables, but his absolutely uncompromising emphasis upon the renunciation of violence, the supremacy of charity over all other moral virtues and the limitless inclusiveness of divine love. Above all, Christ gave imaginative shape and dimensions to the Kingdom he proclaimed by requiring that his followers forego vengeance, bear the burdens of others, forgive debts, share their goods with the poor, and love their enemies, and by forbidding them from passing judgment on others for their sins. He also insisted that his disciples keep company with the most despised members of society, including even tax collectors, Samaritans and harlots.