Christianity Continued

 

 

6.

We must now study the war of creeds so characteristic of Christianity. To this day, not only the differences between the major sects of Christianity, namely Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy and Protestantism remain outstanding but each of these sects has its own history of creedal wars ad infinitum and ad nauseatum.

 

The greatest historical dispute among Christians have been the nature of the Christ and then the Godhead.  We need not go into details but by way of example we may quote two schools about the nature of the Christ. The Monophysite doctrine says that the Christ had only one nature and that was divine with human attributes!  What Divine but with human attributes as well is difficult to understand as all silly if pompous claims to profound understanding are. According to the rival doctrine of Monothelitism there are in the Christ two natures, one Divine and the other human but only one will which is God’s.  Still a third doctrine, namely Dyothelitism according to which there are two wills in Christ, one Divine the other human. Take your pick.

 

Now these were not mere differences of opinion held with mutual respect by their votaries; they were a matter of life and death and brought the parties to each other’s throats for centuries.  It is important to remember that that almost as soon as Jesus departed mortal combat began between those claiming to follow him. The first and greatest schism was caused by St Paul who made a radical diversion from Judaism of which Jesus was but a full member without deviance or apology.  We have seen a bit of this above. The last great schism has been the Protestantism which was a radical reaction to Catholicism. Lesser schisms have always plagued Christianity in between the Pauline heresy and the Protestant protest and lesser schisms are still alive and kicking today despite the decline of Christianity as a power over men.  This religion cannot simply standardise and stabilise nor it can learn to tolerate even he minutest differences. All these can only indicate the hairy finger of the Satan wriggling somewhere below the surface. Until a mere few centuries ago sectarian differences put Christian sects and states at each other’s throat and could only end after a lot of bloodshed and destruction.  Thirty Years War (1618- 1648) engulfed Protestant and Catholic powers in a war that ruined Europe and hundreds of thousands lives from England to Prague in the Holy Roman Empire.  

 

Yet the highest water mark of all inter-sectarian disputes has been the fateful Council of Nicaea (325 CE).  It happened during the reign and under the auspices of Constantine and its aftermaths wasted the times of two more emperors after him. Let us look into it a bit.

Two deacons of the Alexandrian church, namely the old and dignified Arius and young and unscrupulously ambitious Athanasius began a dispute which lasted so long and became so vastly popularised that it began to shake Christianity to its foundations. From Alexandria the popular debate spread all the way to the borders of the Roman empire. One could see over all this vast area all sorts of people high or low taking sides and debating the point of contention between the two clerics. While Arius maintained that the Son (Christ) was divine only in a derived sense and was a creation of the Father (God) Athanasius vehemently disagreed and defended that the Christ was fully Divine and uncreated. 

 

In fact he ‘explained’ that the Father and the Son were of the same substance and co-eternal. Arius countered that the two were of similar and therefore not identical substance. From this distance in time and from the sane and practical viewpoint of Islam this dispute could not seem more silly and in fact and unnecessary blasphemy.  It is neither our duty nor within our competence to analyse God or the Godhead. Things should be taken realistically and pragmatically-  Jesus was a man like other men pure and simple and by today’s knowledge his birth from a virgin can be speculatively explained as a genetic freak by which a human egg could be fertilised by some natural test-tube like process within the virgin’s body. After all we are now totally able to fertilise an egg by adding to it genetic material from a non-sexual cell, like a blood and even skin cell. This does not make the baby less human or on the contrary, a god.  Whether one believes or not that Mary had intercourse with a man this possibility of a baby being created without a male sperm remains a scientific fact. Faith is faith and when it has some justification from science so much the better.

 

Be as it may the debate gradually got out of hand and while it entertained thousands in the streets, market places and seminaries who took sides and argued like today’s rival football fans for other sceptical thousands it made religion a laughing stock and its clerics sophisticated fools.  Alexander Bishop of Alexandria and the boss of the two deacons tried in vain to reconcile the two and the whole church threatened to be split in two. This was the last thing Constantine wanted; he needed Christianity to unify his empire, not to divide it. In exasperation he sent letters to the parties concerned to prevent a more serious fight and the split but to no avail.  Eventually he called a meeting of all bishops in the empire to be held in Nicaea, a town just outside Constantinople.

 

They met in 325 and the debates and deliberations began after an introductory talk by the emperor. Soon it transpired that it as Arius who represented orthodoxy since it became obvious that the great majority of bishops were thinking on similar lines as him.  But Athanasius was not prepared to admit defeat or fail to win. He conspired with Hosius the bishop of Spain who represented the papal view which was closer to Athanasian wiew.  This clique apparently persuaded the emperor behind closed doors that the more glorious the Christ came out from this meeting the better for the emperor since he would rule in the name of a god in Christ and no less. What is more, the Athanasian formula removed all ambiguities and gave a clear and unbeatable prestige to the Christ. The emperor thus won over went on and imposed this Athanasian position despite the chagrin of the then orthodox majority which included his own bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia.  Threats or bribes no measure was left unused to bend the will of the majority; at last they were faced with the ultimatum to sign up to the Athanasian creed or lose their seats and sees.  Most being old and worn out clerics too much in need of imperial favour signed up with fingers crossed; only Arius and another colleague refused and the two were banned and exiled.  

 

As such we see in the almost teenage Athanasius a typical example of the tyrant, the religious type.  Sure and soon enough he succeeded to the throne of the old bishop of Alexandria, similarly named Alexander whom he had already been keeping under his thumb as many young and ambitious subordinates hold their waning superiors. What is more the hasty elections following the death of the old bishop was an impeccable example of a fixed  elections; only those clerics who supported Athanasius were allowed to vote while any ‘unreliables’ were variously barred and frustrated.  This tactic of tyrannous maniplulation of elections has a very old pedigree and still lives on today very well indeed. From great multinationals and political parties to some of the smallest local charities positions of power are lusted after and various conspiracies compete to win them often at the expense of breaking laws and regulations. Priestly religions are similarly conspiratorial and tyrannical. Often the worst if good-looking characters win. The young church politician was just being more political than the old Arius and engineering his success.  

 

But like all artificial and forced impositions his success was under threat.  When Constantine died and his son Constantius took over he was made aware of the bitterly brewing discontent among the clergy; he felt he could not afford to estrange his power base in the Christian church and allowed himself to be persuaded to the orthodoxy of the Arian creed. He accordingly allowed the dissenting majority of the clerics to call another synod (plenary meeting) to impose the Arian creed.  Athanasius was called to explain himself, was accused of serious crimes like irregularities, tyranny and sexual offences, desposed and sent into exile while Arius was post mortem exonerated.  He was previously pardoned by Constantine though and had been on his way to Constantinople to meet and receive the favour of the emperor. It was a mistake. He was poisoned before he could meet the emperor and died; his Athanasian enemies celebrated this ‘punishment from heaven’ heartily unaware that the real Heaven was about to avenge it soon.

 

But Athanasius, like all great tyrants could not sit and lick his wounds. From his exile he kept fighting from behind closed doors; as a result he won his seat and then again lost it quite a few times as the emperors vacillated between the pressures of the two factions. Athanasius was to have the last laugh and thus was ended any crumbles of orthodoxy in the Christian religion and the greatest blasphemy under Biblical law and tradition, namely deification and idolisation of a creature was achieved.  Interestingly, at this stage there was no Trinity because there was no third person in Godhead. The Holy Spirit arrived only at a much later synod when the orthodoxy was firmly wedded to the Nicene Creed advanced by Athanasius.

 

7.

The grandest and the most lasting product of Christianity was the Medieval church in the west, called the Catholic Church headed by the bishops of Rome called the popes or pontiffs.  For their part the eastern Christians differed and called their church the Orthodox Church and their head was the bishop of Constantinople and was called the patriarch. Also Nicene in creed, it was only a political rival of the Catholic Church and the differences between the two were more about rituals and their dates than anything else.  To begin with the Orthodox Church had a calendar two weeks behind the Catholic which difference still make the celebration of the Easter two weeks after the Catholics.  The Orthodox Church represents the full Hellenisation of the Roman Empire after its transferring its capital from Rome in the West to Constantinople in the East while the papacy in the West exploited this self-imposed distance of the emperors to boost its own imperial pretensions since the popes and emperors had increasingly been jealous of each other on account of each claiming full obedience as well as taxes from the same masses.

 

This jealousy survived in the West between popes and the empires which superseded the Roman in the West; the first such was the Frankish Carolingian Empire whose apex was Charlemagne. He was crowned emperor of the West by pope Leo III in 800.  Later on and after some decline and divisions this empire recovered and was renamed Holy Roman Empire. It lasted into the 19^th century when Napoleon conquered and disestablished it.

Between these beginnings and endings emperors as well as kings had alternating love- hate relations with the Roman pontiffs and the latter just like the former competed in political conspiring and forming of military alliances and fighting wars which showed that popes were every bit political emperors as they were the alleged vicars of Christ and shadows of God on earth.  Occasionally they made and broke kings and forgave penitent kings on their coming to the pope barefoot, crestfallen and solicitous.

 

The chief weapon the popes wielded was excommunication. A pope could destroy, at least in theory any Christian whether royal or not by declaring him a heretic or infidel. Sometimes other punishments followed an excommunication or independently; it was especially the plague of philosophers and scientists who dared to challenge the dogmas, sacraments, conduct or cosmological assumptions of the church. Additional victims were created when a new religious movement introduced interpretations of dogma or new forms of rituals unsanctioned by the church.  In that case popes and kings united to crush the new movement. Another category picked out for condemnation and destruction were the witches. 

 

Although there were genuine dabblers in witchcraft who perhaps deserved punishment given the universal beliefs of the times about the dangers of magic a lot of the accused were either pathetically deranged persons (whom we would today compassionately put into mental institutions and treat with drugs among other methods) or victims of jealousy who were informed against by a conspiring enemy or enemies. The accused were hardly given a chance to exonerate themselves; often they had to ‘confess’ on pain of torture which was inflicted by talented psychopaths in the employment of the church.

Later on, to complete the scandal of the Medieval church an institution called the Holy Inquisition was established. Formally instituted by pope Gregory IX in 1231 its mission was crushing the Cathari and Waldenses heretics but survived even after they were extinguished. It continues to this day under changing names and moderating stances. Its present name is The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and can only work at maintaining Roman Catholic discipline in a modern, non-violent sense. Before this modernisation it was the most brutal institution of repression history has seen anywhere and its dogmatism and vindictiveness may be at the root of both the Nazi and Soviet experiments. From the most subtle and pervasive surveillance of the subjects to the most unconscionable practice of trumped up charges the Inquisition has since been the model for all tyrants including the dictators ruling over Muslims in many countries.

 

The ‘Holy’ Inquisition was a spy and informant infested organisation with local heads chosen for their fanaticism and cruelty who enjoyed their job every bit. They were particularly interested in women suspects from whom they loved to extract detailed and obscene confessions of how they copulated with the Devil. They had to describe every imaginary detail or would be forced by torture to reveal what the inquisitor liked to hear.

This love-hate relation of the Christian soul with sex is unique in human history and not shared by any other large community of humans or by any other national civilisation outside Christianity. In other monastic religions sometimes sex was denigrated but that was all as far as the monks are concerned-  the masses were left alone to enjoy it naturally and without blame. In Christianity even married sex did not escape contempt to say the least. When so denigrated and blamed however it avenged its humiliation by making the denigrators obsessed with it more than normal people would and also often also led the denigrators themselves to committing sexual crimes and excesses which could make even the Devil blush and blanch.  It has been common knowledge that, like in all celibacy-imposing religions, churches and monasteries have been secretive dens of sexual orgies and offences- the Hindu and Buddhist temples indulged in it as Christian churches did.

 

When women were not available or even when they were, male homosexuality was routinely indulged in. In the case of Christianity such sinning clerics and monks, having a bad conscience in the extreme, behaved even more fanatically and censoriously towards their flocks to whom they transferred their guilt, perhaps to cheat their own conscience.

This remains the norm to this day and, for example, in the so-called Bible-belt of the USA sexual scandals within denominational churches from the top to the bottom level frequently hit the headlines.  Then we meet once almost ‘divine’ men confessing and sobbing on the TV screens but often not forgetting to ask for forgivenes so that they can go on.  All pose as saints if not gods until caught. Embezzlement of church funds is another habit.  Islam has no church and no celibacy to cause such unnecessary misery. Our debt to Muhammad sws is incalculable.  We frankly love sex, thank for it to Allah and legitimately and responsibly enjoy it to the benefit of all concerned including the future generations as the greatest beneficiaries.

 

Another habit of the Medieval church was the rejection of philosophical speculations which could endanger the dogmas and the persecution of the philosophers and scientists (who were drawn from the philosophers, for science had not yet been separated from philosophy) who arrived at un-Christian conclusions as the clerics saw it. As a result while Muslims were thriving on philosophy and science their Christian contemporaries were sinking into the depths of ignorance and superstition, as well as intolerance and brutality.  In Islamdom, persons sounding heretical were even more numerous than Christendom whether their claims were theological,  eschatological or scientific; All of the following, among hundreds more looked culpable in this respect:  Ibn Sina, Farabi, Ibn Rushd… among philosophers and Suhrawardi, ibn Arabi and Jili… among the Sufis.  None of these except Suhrawardi was tried and punished and that did not please many enlightened Muslims. The more tolerant and enlightened Muslim opinion had been that so long a man outwardly professes Islam and observes its commandments his philosophical and esoteric claims are secondary and should be countered not by punishment but by counter arguments.

 

As a result best ulema and mashayikh exchanged arguments with their academic opponents and did not generally asked for the head of each other. Basically only scandalised public outcry censured any deviants and kings preferred banishment to physical punishment. For example, philosopher-jurist ibn Rushd (13^th century) who could not quite believe in a physical resurrection of the bodies and cautiously wrote to that effect and had offered instead a Cosmic immortality instead of personal individual was not put down at all. His patron the ruler of Morocco exiled him to Cordova in Spain to defuse the public anger but not long after forgiving him he reinstated him. He died soon afterwards though and his tomb stands to this day in Morocco.  What is important here to see is that Muslims were far less inclined than their Christian contemporaries to proscribe their philopsophoical deviants, not because they cared less for orthodoxy but because they were wont to give more benefit of the doubt to the offenders and more time to pull themselves together, if at all.  Ibn Rushd is famous also for his exchange of arguments with Ghazali, the scion of Islamic orthodoxy. Christian doubters and deviants never enjoyed such tolerance until the Renaissance but were persecuted to serious if varying extents. As late as 16^th century Bruno, for his pantheistic views, could be burnt at the stake. About the same time an even better scholar, namely Galileo, for just supporting the correct heliocentric Copernican explanation of the Solar System was arrested by the Inquisition and could only escape death by recanting his view.  What the Church was supporting however was not any Biblical view of the heavenly mechanics but the slightly less good geocentric explanation perfected by a pagan Greek astronomer of the second century.  Incidentally, it is the other way round nowadays; it is the Christians who tolerate religious dissent and Muslims who don’t.  Apparently this world sometimes works like a seesaw. 

 

8.

The excesses of the Catholic Church had another peculiar result; it provoked an internal, home-grown backlash as fanatic and inquisitorial as itself.  Its background was the increasing awareness of the Christian literate men that Islam was winning the competition by being more open to controversies and compromises on top of its scientific and other cultural achievements. The West was hungrily imitating Islam in many ways although without dampening its jealous hatred. All such imitations were not only philosophical, scientific or institutional; surprisingly if grudgingly and unadmittingly there was also a religious imitation in the making.

 

This brewing revisionism matured in the rebellion the German cleric Martin Luther sparked. Flourishing in the first half of the 16^th century this German monk turned a priest and than a professor of theology at Wittenberg university was an original thinker with a passionate temper. He keenly observed the excesses and abuses of the papacy and especially resented the sale of indulgences. He visited Rome and was shocked by the corruption ad mendacity he daily came across there. Especially insulting to his piety was the mercenary sale of documents declaring the buyer absolved of all his sins; these documents were issued by some clerics and monks under papal authority and were called indulgences. This practice exactly duplicated the fee-charging redemptory or wish-fulfilling practices of all pagan priesthoods from Sumeria to India as we have already seen. The income from these popular sales fed the papal coffers and spent on anything from adding more luxury to the papal quarters to financing wars against any opposition. Many bought them at considerable cost to be buried with them so that if challenged in the hereafter they could shield themselves from punishments awaiting them.  Himself a tyrannical personality type with a penchant for violent and vicious argumentation Luther returned to Germany to condemn the papal practices. His basic objection and contention was that of Paul: Salvation was possible only and fully through faith in Christ and all hypocritical devotions or mercenary bribes to the Catholic church were vain and abusive practices.

 

He preached his views with the characteristic intensity of a Jewish prophet and there was no obscene word he could not employ to insult the pope and his corrupt church. Initially he only made enemies in his Germany on top of impossibly incensing the pope who excommunicated him. He went into hiding for sometime but gradually some German princes weary of the heavy handed treatment of them by the papacy started to tentatively and cautiously play with the idea of using Luther to throw off the papal yoke.  They saw with envy how Henry VIII of England had broken away from the Roman church and had established the Church of England some time ago and hoped they could achieve a similar emancipation. As a result support for Luther grew as his audacity did- he could burn the papal bull against him in public and enjoy popular applause. It was a revolution for which the time was right.  With his characteristic daring he went for more radicalism, shifted the Christian emphasis on the New Testament (which he had for the first time translated into German) to the Old Testament whose vehemence matched his own.  He abolished many Catholic practices, for example the ban on priests’ marrying and married his long time nun sweetheart and produced several children in a jolly home. As a husband and family man he was quite good; his domestic life and relations with friends were quite gregarious; he became his angry and vindictive self when it came to religious arguments.

 

Despite breaking the papal authority to pieces and launching a new church called the Protestant the inner workings of the new church proved no less obscurantist and persecuting then the Catholic simply because in Luther was one tyrant replacing another in the pope. This has been the perennial feature of all Christian schisms; It breeds sects with the speed of insects breeding insects and by the laws of genetics all the insects bred share the same character- tyranny!  In all claims are elitist and exclusivist, rules strict, taxes high and promises illusory and failing yet addictive to the recipients. Because all share the same hysteria and neurosis about sex they are particularly prone to sexual temptation and abuse, as a result hypocrisy is endemic and inalienable.

 

About two decades after Luther came another protestant reformer, namely the French cleric John Calvin.  His version similarly dismissed and denounced papacy as the infallible institution of Christianity and the papal abuses;  his Calvinist church teaches that man has no freewill and everything in his life is pre-destined. All to be saved made up an elite destined from past eternity ad naturally only those who were attracted to Calvin were the ones. Protestantism spread to some other European nations like the Dutch and each national church have their peculiarities.  Their common theses, other than rejecting papacy, are the fundamental and exclusive role of the Bible in defining the Christian creed and law and therefore invalidity of all later dogmas or practices  developed by the Catholic church over centuries.  Among these were the worship of Mary and the veneration and invocation of saints. In other words the protestants were somewhat like the Wahhabis in later Islam although the Catholics were no sunnis but themselves lavish innovators who had frozen their brazen early innovations into unbreakable traditions.

 

But all Christianity so diversifying were in for a shock. The new philosophy and science of Europe flourishing since the Renaissance under often unacknowledged influence of Islam was achieving enough authority and self-confidence as from the 16^th century, i.e, about when Luther was busy with teaching his superstitions.  The earlier figures of this rise of rational thought like Galileo and Bruno could be silenced but gradually the Church, whether Catholic or Protestant was being forced on to the defensive.  The Medieval social order based on the twin dominance of the nobility and the church was being eroded by the emergence of a commercial and industrial middle class, the bourgeoisie who, by their accumulating wealth and influence could dictate to both a few things and then more. As all middle classes these inclined to secularism since sudden wealth often erodes religious faith and scruples. These could only benefit from  the challenge the new secular philosophy and science could pose to the church and the landed nobility; these two old aristocracies claimed divinely granted prerogatives which the newly rising middle classes could not afford to support too much.

 

While philosophy poked its nose in all nooks and crannies of theology and priestly or lordly authority the new science exposed the fallacies of the religious cosmology, like extending the life of the world to infinitely more ancient dates than the four thousand BCE the Church claimed when the first man and woman was created.  All the heretical teachings of the Greek philosophy was being unleashed on Europe and it was only a matter of time before they discredited the cosmological and even the eschatological teachings of the church. What is more, most of the new philosophers and scientists were trained churchmen which indicted that the rot was coming from the inside. The protestant movement had badly shaken the Catholic teachings which shaking could only extend to the dogmas, but once the Catholic dogmas were shaken so could all revised dogmas and they were in due course.

 

Industrial Revolution as from 1750s and the French Revolution of 1789 almost nailed the Churches. The first revolutionised the social structure by weakening the nobility while boosting the bourgeoisie as well as creating a vast bottom layer of a wretched proletariat. The last both shouldered the burdens of national enrichment and exposed the inhumanity of man two man for a second time, for these same proletariat were the serfs of yesterday under similarly deprived conditions. The new philosophers found in these oppressed classes the theme of their secular gospels which variously preached democracy and communism. The first found a chance in the French Revolution to impose itself but initially failed all hopes when the leaders of the revolution themselves acted dictatorially and oppressively. They systematically hunted down and exterminated the nobility including the king and the queen. Equally radically they attacked the church which they disestablished and declared Atheism and democracy as the new twin ideology. Secularism replaced religion in national education and both the nobility and the priesthood were subjected to public abuse at all levels and in all localities. French newspapers and magazines were full of abusive articles, poems and caricatures of everything the French held sacred until only yesterday and God Himself was not spared but was particularly picked on. For ten years France was ruled or left in anarchy by one coupist government after another, each succeeding one behaving in a way to make the people miss the former royal regime-  until France became ungovernable.

 

In 1799 the young general Napoleon staged his own coup, seized power and soon afterwards had himself declared emperor to the relief of all concerned. Monarchy had come back with a vengeance but it could not last too long but take account of what had entered the soul of France- democracy. Democracy eventually came to France but not as the French revolutionaries would like. It was built on a compromise between the secular state and the church whereby the church would confine itself to only spiritual matters for only those who consented to its doctrines while all the rest, including national education and law would be in the hands of the national government democratically elected by universal suffrage.

 

But religion could not take its last breath of relief yet. It had escaped the wrath of secularism by a whisker when it was grabbed by the French Revolution which meant murder and no less. Hardly the compromise between the Revolution and the Christianity was worked out under Napoleon and the subsequent French governments when another equally brutal enemy of religion began to raise its head in Karl Marx.  With the help and cooperation of an industrialist named Engels the newest version of the oldest man-made ideology was being launched. In 1848 the two published the epoch-making ‘Communist Manifesto’ while in 1867 Marx published his Definitive work Das Kapital. His ideology was the most radical exposition of a socialist or communist system which could only be realised if and when both the religion and the bourgeoisie were destroyed and these could only be destroyed by violence.  If the Marxist movement could not add much on the anti-religious effects of the French Revolution in Western Europe it did so in the Eastern. The brilliantly conspiratorial and ruthless party run by Lenin, namely the Bolshevik party violently seized power in Russia in 1917 and a totally anti-religious regime called the Soviet Union was created.

 

Yet neither the French Revolution, nor the Soviet regime could deliver religion a death blow. As seen throughout history time and again, established religions are far stronger institutions than states whatever their power and can only be decimated and submerged for a while. Whatever his sins all men barring a few full psychopaths are religious to a certain extent, because they often fear dead too badly and abhor extinction and love existing in any form more than anything  else.  It has been reported severally that even some Soviet leaders sent for a priest while at the gate of death to give them the sacraments in case there is a next world.  However suppressed initially the Russian Orthodox Church had to be invited back into life and developed when the desperate sufferings and privations of the German attack and occupation of Russia made perhaps the most irreligious person in history Stalin to dust off the Church and re-launch it as a centre of national morale building and comfort giving institution. All undemolished churches were reopened, any priest who could survive the purge of their class were reinstated as well as new churches being built and new priests recruited. When the Soviets collapsed in 1990 religion in Russia made a comeback with a vengeance and for a while the Bible became a bestseller, especially among the youth. All of which shows that religiosity is among the genes of man and when religions are formally suppressed the secular ideologies replacing them necessarily become religionised.  The tyrants of the secular ideology replace the pagan gods of religion they disestablished while the ceremonies of the secular regime take over from the mass rituals of paganism. Both Hitler’s flag-bedecked Nazi mass demonstrations and the hammer-and-sickle waving proletariat marches under the Bolsheviks were, psychologically speaking, religious.