One of the most distinctive features of the expiring century is the increasing vehemence of the opposition between science and Christianity. That is both natural and inevitable. In the same proportion in which the victorious progress of modern science has surpassed all the scientific achievements of earlier ages has the untenability been proved of those mystic views which would subdue reason under the yoke of an alleged revelation; and the Christian religion belongs to that group. The more solidly modern astronomy, physics, and chemistry have established the sole dominion of inflexible natural laws in the universe at large, and modern botany, zoology, and anthropology have proved the validity of those laws in the entire kingdom of organic nature, so much the more strenuously has the Christian religion, in association with dualistic metaphysics, striven to deny the application of these natural laws in the province of the so-called “spiritual life”—that is, in one section of the physiology of the brain.
No one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably enunciated this open and irreconcilable opposition between the modern scientific and the outworn Christian view than David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest theologian of the nineteenth century. His last work, The Old Faith and the New, is a magnificent expression of the honest conviction of all educated people of the present day who understand this unavoidable conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines of Christianity and the illuminating, rational revelation of modern science—all those who have the courage to defend the right of reason against the pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of the philosophic demand for a unified system of thought. Strauss, as an honorable and courageous free-thinker, has expounded far better than I could the principal points of difference between “the old and the new faith.” The absolute irreconcilability of the opponents and the inevitability of their struggle (“for life or death”) have been ably presented on the philosophic side by E. Hartmann, in his interesting work on The Self-Destruction of Christianity.
When the works of Strauss and Feuerbach and The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science of J. W. Draper have been read, it may seem superfluous for us to devote a special chapter to the subject. Yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our purpose, to cast a critical glance at the historical course of this great struggle; especially seeing that the attacks of the “Church militant” on science in general, and on the theory of evolution in particular, have become extremely bitter and menacing of late years. Unfortunately, the mental relaxation which has lately set in, and the rising flood of reaction in the political, social, and ecclesiastical world, are only too well calculated to give point to those dangers. If any one doubts it, he has only to look over the conduct of Christian synods and of the German Reichstag during the last few years. Quite in harmony are the recent efforts of many secular governments to get on as good a footing as possible with the “spiritual regiment,” their deadly enemy—that is, to submit to its yoke. The two forces find a common aim in the suppression of free thought and free scientific research, for the purpose of thus more easily securing a complete despotism.
Let us first emphatically protest that it is a question for us of the necessary defence of science and reason against the vigorous attacks of the Christian Church and its vast army, not of an unprovoked attack of science on religion. And, in the first place, our defence must be prepared against Romanism or Ultramontanism. This “one ark of salvation,” this Catholic Church “destined for all,” is not only much larger and more powerful than the other Christian sects, but it has the exceptional advantage of a vast, centralized organization and an unrivalled political ability. Men of science are often heard to say that the Catholic superstition is no more astute than the other forms of supernatural faith, and that all these insidious institutions are equally inimical to reason and science. As a matter of general theoretical principle the statement may pass, but it is certainly wrong when we look to its practical side. The deliberate and indiscriminate attacks of the ultramontane Church on science, supported by the apathy and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its powerful organization, much more severe and dangerous than those of other religions.
In order to appreciate correctly the extreme importance of Christianity in regard to the entire history of civilization, and particularly its fundamental opposition to reason and science, we must briefly run over the principal stages of its historical evolution. It may be divided into four periods: (1) primitive Christianity (the first three centuries), (2) papal Christianity (twelve centuries, from the fourth to the fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth), and (4) modern pseudo-Christianity.
I.—PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
Primitive Christianity embraces the first three centuries. Christ himself, the noble prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love of humanity, was far below the level of classical culture; he knew nothing beyond the Jewish traditions; he has not left a single line of writing. He had, indeed, no suspicion of the advanced stage to which Greek philosophy and science had progressed five hundred years before.
All that we know of him and of his original teaching is taken from the chief documents of the New Testament—the four gospels and the Pauline epistles. As to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were selected from a host of contradictory and forged manuscripts of the first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who assembled at the Council of Nicæa in 327. The entire list of gospels numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. As the contending and mutually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they determined to leave the selection to a miracle. They put all the books (according to the Synodicon of Pappus) together underneath the altar, and prayed that the apocryphal books, of human origin, might remain there, and the genuine, inspired books might be miraculously placed on the table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, really occurred! The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all written after them, not by them, at the beginning of the second century) and the very different fourth gospel (ostensibly “after” John, written about the middle of the second century) leaped on the table, and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of Christian doctrine. If any modern “unbeliever” finds this story of the “leap of the sacred books” incredible, we must remind him that it is just as credible as the table-turning and spirit-rapping that are believed to take place to-day by millions of educated people; and that hundreds of millions of Christians believe just as implicitly in their personal immortality, their “resurrection from the dead,” and the Trinity of God—dogmas that contradict pure reason no more and no less than that miraculous bound of the gospel manuscripts.
The most important sources after the gospels are the fourteen separate (and generally forged) epistles of Paul. The genuine Pauline epistles (three in number, according to recent criticism—to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians) were written before the canonical gospels, and contain less incredible miraculous matter than they. They are also more concerned than the gospels to adjust themselves with a rational view of the world. Hence the advanced theology of modern times constructs its “ideal Christianity” rather on the base of the Pauline epistles than on the gospels, so that it has been called “Paulinism.”
The remarkable personality of Paul, who possessed much more culture and practical sense than Christ, is extremely interesting, from the anthropological point of view, from the fact that the racial origin of the two great religious founders is very much the same. Recent historical investigation teaches that Paul’s father was of Greek nationality, and his mother of Jewish.[33] The half-breeds of these two races, which are so very distant in origin (although they are branches of the same species, the homo mediterraneus), are often distinguished by a happy blending of talents and temperament, as we find in many recent and actual instances. The plastic Oriental imagination and the critical Western reason often admirably combine and complete each other. That is visible in the Pauline teaching, which soon obtained a greater influence than the earliest Christian notions. Hence it is not incorrect to consider Paulinism a new phenomenon, of which the father was the philosophy of the Greeks, and the mother the religion of the Jews. Neoplatonism is an analogous combination.