We Have All Internalized the Christian Revolution
As I keep hearing allegations that the world would be better without Christianity, I keep returning to Tom Holland’s work Dominion and John Dickson’s work Saints and Bullies which leave me continually convinced that, for all the evils of Christendom, with its marriage of church and state, even with crusades, colonialism and conquest – truly terrible as they were – Christendom still genuinely made positive and ultimately revolutionary changes for human civilization.
Consider this, once upon a time, the pagan philosopher Celsus could look down upon Christianity as a detestable and servile religion that only attracted “the foolish, the dishonourable, and stupid, only women, slaves, and little children” (Origen, Against Celsus 3.44). Christianity to Celsus was unmanly and unRoman because at its centre was a so-called crucified God, adored and worshipped by the feeble minded and weak bodied dregs of society. Celsus was typical of Roman aversion to the cult of the crucified Nazarene.
In a new foreword to Tom Holland’s work Dominion, political philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb captures just how radical the Christian message was in a world where the gods were powers and power was worshipped:
The Greco-Romans despised the feeble, the poor, the sick, and the disabled; Christianity glorified the weak, the downtrodden, and the untouchable; and does that all the way to the top of the pecking order. While ancient gods could have their share of travails and difficulties, they remained in that special class of gods. But Jesus was the first ancient deity who suffered the punishment of the slave, the lowest ranking member of the human race. And the sect that succeeded him generalized such glorification of suffering: dying as an inferior is more magnificent than living as the mighty. The Romans were befuddled to see members of that sect use for symbol the cross –the punishment for slaves. It had to be some type of joke in their eyes.
Many so-called intellectuals keep pushing the tiresome notion that Christianity engineered the dark ages to stifle learning, to sponsor the divine right of kings, and to build religious capital into the walls of oppression. Further, they often sprout the view that every advancement of human rights and every progression of human endeavour derives from the free thinkers of the French revolution, the rise of modern science, or from humanist manifestos, all in spite of Christianity not because of it. Yet that old chestnut, well worn it is, has but one fatal flaw: it is not true.