A Short History of Christianity Second Edition, Revised, With Additions

In the dozen years that have passed since this book was written there has probably been some change in the outlook of the more critical of the readers to whom it might be said to be addressed. It challenges criticism on two main issues: that of Christian origins, and that of the sociological interpretation of Christian history. Twelve years ago, the thesis of the non-historicity of the gospel story in respect of its "natural" no less than of its supernatural matter found few serious listeners, even among Rationalists; while the strictly naturalistic study of Christian history incurred a good deal of resentment. To-day, perhaps, the thesis as to origins may receive more attention; while the historic narrative may arouse less impatience. On both issues, critical thought appears to be at work.

The primary problem may be left to the fortunes of discussion: the question as to how Christian history is fitly to be presented in summary is perhaps worth some introductory treatment.

An attentive reading of the reviews of the first edition left the author impressed by the fact that censure was generally passed without any attempt to prove error of statement. Error there may well have been; but it was not pointed out or founded on in the hostile judgments passed by religious reviewers. One German Catholic ecclesiastic was ironical at great length on the account given of the history of the Catholic Church; but he did not seem to impugn any particular historical statement. More serious reviewers made nothing clear save that they resented the selection made of facts and the summing-up from these. So far as the author could gather, they claimed that another set of data should have been given, and another general impression set up. If he understood them aright, they held that the way to write Christian history is to look for all the utterances of good feeling, all the instances of humane action, all the items of political, social, and intellectual betterment that have occurred in the Christian era, and to call the general statement of these--with, of course, a sympathetic account of doctrinal evolution--a history of Christianity. The things on the other side of the shield--the religious wars, the consecration of error, the strangling of truth, the persecutions, the propagandist massacres, the countless cruelties wrought in the name and on the sanction of the faith--are from this point of view external to its history: things to be set down to the perversity of men. All the good that has happened is to be credited to Christianity; all the bad to human nature.

It seems necessary to explain that this is a wholly puerile conception of historical science, and that the notion of historical causation so reached is profoundly false. Impartially applied, the method would yield equivalent panegyric for all religions alike. All that is beautiful and heroic in pre-Christian and non-Christian history would be shown to be due to the creeds of the different times and races; all the harm would be set down, as before, to human nature. The rational statement is that human nature evolved all the religions in turn; that creeds, once established, become special factors; that their varying fortunes are due to the reciprocal reactions of creed and environment; and that to write the history of any one religion it is necessary to consider narrowly how it specifically reacts on conduct in given circumstances of culture and socio-political structure. If it can be shown specifically to promote right action on any line, let that be duly credited to the religion in question as the determinant. If, on the other hand, it can be shown to promote wrong action, the fact must on the same principle be put to its discredit. But no Christian historian, broadly speaking, ever thinks of crediting to Greek polytheism the fairer aspects of Greek life, or to Islam the virtues of veracity and courage sometimes ascribed to Turks and Arabs; though professedly Christian historians have been known to contrast the comparative decency of the execution of Sokrates with the savage horrors of political executions in Christendom down to recent times.

Aristotle and Plato are still founded on for the purposes of higher education in Christian countries; but no Christian writer suggests that what is good or true in their thought is ascribable to paganism qua paganism; though modern ethical development is constantly set down to the score of Christianity. In the same fashion, hospitals in Christian countries are constantly credited to the Christian account, without a thought of admitting that Moslem hospitals are the product of the Koran, or that the mutual helpfulness of Eskimos is a specific result of their heathenism. Paganism is made to figure in general as promoting vice and human sacrifices and slavery; Christianity as putting these things down. The impartial historian pronounces that it has indeed beneficently availed for the suppression of human sacrifice in general, in virtue of its primary dogma; but that qua religion it has no more told against slavery than has Islam; that the slavery maintained till last century under Christian sanctions and auspices has been as cruel as any seen in human history; that the persistence of vice within the sphere of Christianity is the despair of its devotees; and that even in the matter of human sacrifice the hideous massacre wrought on that pretext by the crusaders at Jerusalem tells of a terrible per contra to the account of the faith. To claim for Christianity the latter-day curtailment of slavery, finally, would be to ignore alike the potent economic and the political causation, and to overlook the fact that the strongest defence ever made of slavery as an institution was founded on the Christian sacred books. These facts belong to the "history of Christianity," like the facts of missionary enterprise and the establishment of universities by the Papacy in the Middle Ages: a mere recital of all the forms of progress made in the Christian era has no claim to such a title.

Doubtless it is difficult to trace all the reactions of creed upon society and polity; and it is not to be pretended that a general sketch can even establish the main critical principles to be applied, any more than it can complete the outline of the facts. But inasmuch as the popular fashion of doing both is wholly fallacious, a concise statement which aims at both is necessary, and may lead to fuller and better elucidations. In the preface to the first edition, a hope was expressed that such a conspectus might do an occasional service even to an opponent by bringing out a clear issue; and one hostile German critic was good enough to say that this service had been done.