Phases of Faith; Or, Passages from the History of My Creed

by Francis William Newman

I at length saw how untenable is the argument drawn from the inward history of Christianity in favour of its superhuman origin. In fact: this religion cannot pretend to self-sustaining power. Hardly was it started on its course, when it began to be polluted by the heathenism and false philosophy around it. With the decline of national genius and civil culture it became more and more debased. So far from being able to uphold the existing morality of the best Pagan teachers, it became barbarized itself, and sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption. From ferocious men it learnt ferocity. When civil society began to coalesce into order, Christianity also turned for the better, and presently learned to use the wisdom, first of Romans, then of Greeks: such studies opened men's eyes to new apprehensions of the Scripture and of its doctrine. By gradual and human means, Europe, like ancient Greece, grew up towards better political institutions; and Christianity improved with them,—the Christianity of the more educated. Beyond Europe, where there have been no such institutions, there has been no Protestant Reformation:—that is in the Greek, Armenian, Syrian, Coptic churches. Not unreasonably then do Franks in Turkey disown the title Nazarene, as denoting that Christianity which has not been purified by European laws and European learning. Christianity rises and sinks with political and literary influences: in so far,[10] it does not differ from other religions.

The same applied to the origin and advance of Judaism. It began in polytheistic and idolatrous barbarism: it cleared into a hard monotheism, with much superstition adhering to it. This was farther improved by successive psalmists and prophets, until Judaism culminated. The Jewish faith was eminently grand and pure; but there is nothing[11] in this history which we can adduce in proof of preternatural and miraculous agency.

II. The facts concerning the outward spread of Christianity have also been disguised by the party spirit of Christians, as though there were something essentially different in kind as to the mode in which it began and continued its conquests, from the corresponding history of other religions. But no such distinction can be made out. It is general to all religions to begin by moral means, and proceed farther by more worldly instruments.

Christianity had a great moral superiority over Roman paganism, in its humane doctrine of universal brotherhood, its unselfishness, its holiness; and thereby it attracted to itself (among other and baser materials) all the purest natures and most enthusiastic temperaments. Its first conquests were noble and admirable. But there is nothing superhuman or unusual in this. Mohammedism in the same way conquers those Pagan creeds which are morally inferior to it. The Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks were Pagans, but adopted the religion of Tartars and Persians whom they subjugated, because it was superior and was blended with a superior civilization; exactly as the German conquerors of the Western Empire of Rome adopted some form of Christianity.

But if it is true that the sword of Mohammed was the influence which subjected Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Persia to the religion of Islam, it is no less true that the Roman empire was finally conquered to Christianity by the sword. Before Constantine, Christians were but a small fraction of the empire. In the preceding century they had gone on deteriorating in good sense and most probably therefore in moral worth, and had made no such rapid progress in numbers as to imply that by the mere process of conversion they would ever Christianize the empire. That the conversion of Constantine, such as it was, (for he was baptized only just before death,) was dictated by mere worldly considerations, few modern Christians will deny. Yet a great fact is here implied; viz., that Christianity was adopted as a state-religion, because of the great political power accruing from the organization of the churches and the devotion of Christians to their ecclesiastical citizenship. Roman statesmen well knew that a hundred thousand Roman citizens devoted to the interests of Rome, could keep in subjection a population of ten millions who were destitute of any intense patriotism and had no central objects of attachment. The Christian church had shown its immense resisting power and its tenacious union, in the persecution by Galerius; and Constantine was discerning enough to see the vast political importance of winning over such a body; which, though but a small fraction of the whole empire, was the only party which could give coherence to that empire, the only one which had enthusiastic adherents in every province, the only one on whose resolute devotion it was possible for a partizan to rely securely. The bravery and faithful attachment of Christian regiments was a lesson not lost upon Constantine; and we may say, in some sense, that the Christian soldiers in his armies conquered the empire (that is, the imperial appointments) for Christianity. But Paganism subsisted, even in spite of imperial allurements, until at length the sword of Theodosius violently suppressed heathen worship. So also, it was the spear of Charlemagne which drove the Saxons to baptism, and decided the extirpation of Paganism from Teutonic Europe. There is nothing in all this to distinguish the outward history of Christianity from that of Mohammedism. Barbarous tribes, now and then, venerating the superiority of our knowledge, adopt our religion: so have Pagan nations in Africa voluntarily become Mussulmans. But neither we nor they can appeal to any case, where an old State-religion has yielded without warlike compulsion to the force of heavenly truth,—"charm we never so wisely." The whole influence which Christianity exerts over the world at large depends on the political history of modern Europe. The Christianity of Asia and Abyssinia is perhaps as pure and as respectable in this nineteenth century as it was in the fourth and fifth, yet no good or great deeds come forth out of it, of such a kind that Christian disputants dare to appeal to them with triumph. The politico-religious and very peculiar history of European Christendom has alone elevated the modern world; and as Gibbon remarks, this whole history has directly depended on the fate of the great battles of Tours between the Moors and the Franks. The defeat of Mohammedism by Christendom certainly has not been effected by spiritual weapons. The soldier and the statesman have done to the full as much as the priest to secure Europe for Christianity, and win a Christendom of which Christians can be proud. As for the Christendom of Asia, the apologists of Christianity simply ignore it. With these facts, how can it be pretended that the external history of Christianity points to an exclusively divine origin?

The author of the "Eclipse of Faith" has derided me for despatching in two paragraphs what occupied Gibbon's whole fifteenth chapter; but this author, here as always, misrepresents me. Gibbon is exhibiting and developing the deep-seated causes of the spread of Christianity before Constantine, and he by no means exhausts the subject. I am comparing the ostensible and notorious facts concerning the outward conquest of Christianity with those of other religions. To account for the early growth of any religion, Christian, Mussulman, or Mormonite, is always difficult.

III. The moral advantages which we owe to Christianity have been exaggerated by the same party spirit, as if there were in them anything miraculous.

1. We are told that Christianity is the decisive influence which has raised womankind: this does not appear to be true. The old Roman matron was, relatively to her husband,[12] morally as high as in modern Italy: nor is there any ground for supposing that modern women have advantage over the ancient in Spain and Portugal, where Germanic have been counteracted by Moorish influences. The relative position of the sexes in Homeric Greece exhibits nothing materially different from the present day. In Armenia and Syria perhaps Christianity has done the service of extinguishing polygamy: this is creditable, though nowise miraculous. Judaism also unlearnt polygamy, and made an unbidden improvement upon Moses. In short, only in countries where Germanic sentiment has taken root, do we see marks of any elevation of the female sex superior to that of Pagan antiquity; and as this elevation of the German woman in her deepest Paganism was already striking to Tacitus and his contemporaries, it is highly unreasonable to claim it as an achievement of Christianity.

In point of fact, Christian doctrine, as propounded by Paul, is not at all so honourable to woman as that which German soundness of heart has established. With Paul[13] the sole reason for marriage is, that a man may gratify instinct without sin. He teaches, that but for this object it would be better not to marry. He wishes that all were in this respect as free as himself, and calls it a special gift of God. He does not encourage a man to desire a mutual soul intimately to share griefs and joys; one in whom the confiding heart can repose, whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose voice shall beguile sorrow. He does not seem aware that the fascinations of woman refine and chasten society; that virtuous attachment has in it an element of respect, which abashes and purifies, and which shields the soul, even when marriage is deferred; nor yet, that the union of two persons who have no previous affection can seldom yield the highest fruits of matrimony, but often leads to the severest temptations. How should he have known all this? Courtship before marriage did not exist in the society open to him: hence he treats the propriety of giving away a maiden, as one in which her conscience, her likes and dislikes, are not concerned: 1 Cor. vii. 37, 38. If the law leaves the parent "power over his own will" and imposes no "necessity" to give her away, Paul decidedly advises to keep her unmarried.

The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more degrading view of the matrimonial relation. In one of his visions he exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, perpetual attendants of "the Lamb," and places the cardinal point of their sanctity in the fact, that "they were not defiled with women, but were virgins." Marriage, therefore, is defilement! Protestant writers struggle in vain against this obvious meaning of the passage. Against all analogy of Scriptural metaphor, they gratuitously pretend that women mean idolatrous religions: namely, because in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is personified as a virgin betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken of as her paramour.