When it comes to Church history, we must always remember that oftentimes the true impact of Christianity is to be found far away from the halls of power. While the majority of popes in the West during the Byzantine Age were turning Rome into a brothel, there were countless devout and holy men and women throughout Europe who were too busy being salt and light to a darkened European world to really care what some illegitimate, irreligious degenerate was doing in Rome. Perhaps there was no more influential man during this time than Benedict (480-543 AD), the founder of the Benedictine monastic order.
The role of monks throughout Church history and their contribution to Western civilization has long been ignored because of the stereotype that thinks “monks simply went off by themselves to pray.” Although it is true that the fundamental feature in the lives of monks was, indeed, prayer, it would be foolish and naïve to think that was all they did. In reality, most monks lived, not as solitaries, but rather in communities. In fact, it was in the monasteries where not only was learning and education preserved for Western civilization, but also, because of the tireless work of monks, where the technological and agricultural advances that have affected the world ever since found their genesis. All those things were merely by products of their main focus in life…lives devoted to prayer and contemplation.
Benedict was born at the very time the western part of the empire (i.e. Western Europe) was disintegrating. As John Henry Newman has said, Benedict “…found the world, physical and social, in ruins.” And so, what Benedict and thousands of other dedicated monks did for the next few hundred years was to slowly rebuild a Christian society from the ruins of pagan ruins. Newman put it this way:
“…and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than visitation, correction, or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and a city.”[Religion and the Rise of Western Culture 57]
This slow work must be truly appreciated, because it bears witness to a fundamental truth of societies and cultures. History books love to focus on kings and popes, political intrigues and wars. If that is all we focus on, though, we will be ignorant of the fact that the bulk of civilization is built up and developed by men and women whose names we have lost to history. There will always be a handful of names that we remember—names like Benedict—but those names really represent larger, lasting movements that endure and shape civilization in ways that dwarf the achievements of most kings and popes.
The way in which Christianity ultimately defeated the pagan world and re-shaped Europe was not by means of the sword. It was by means of monastic work. Occasionally there were forced conversions (as done by Charlemagne with the Saxons), but in reality, the pagans in Europe were drawn to Christianity because they saw monasteries flourish. They came to see that it was in the monasteries where education could be found—simply put, they saw that Christianity offered a better life in the here and now. For not only in those monasteries did the monks and nuns live in community in order to remake Europe, they made it a point to love their neighbors, even pagans, in the way the Christ commanded. As Vincent Carroll points out in his book, Christianity on Trial, an early Benedict document enjoined Benedictine monks in the following manner: “Let special care be taken in reception of the poor and strangers, because in them Christ is more truly welcome” (149). And at the monastery at Cluny, the monks provided for 17,000 poor persons every year.
And, although there were moments of confrontation (as when Benedict chopped down the pagan groves), the typical habit of the monks was to reach out to the pagan society around them and show how Christ “fit in” to their worldview. They would take, for example, a pagan spring thought to be magical, would teach them that Jesus Christ gives the water of life, and would then associate that spring with a Christian saint. In effect, monks would “Christianize” pagan artifacts, sites, and stories in an attempt to translate Christ to a pagan world. It would be foolish to characterize such attempts as either unadulterated successes or shameless deceptions, for, as with everything, the results of such Christianizing attempts were mixed.
Christianity in Pagan Europe: Sometimes Lost in Translation
It should come as no surprise to find that many times, in the attempts of Catholic monks to “translation” Christianity for the pagan culture, that some things got lost in translation. In his book, The Triumph of Christianity, Rodney Stark touches upon this very issue in quite some detail. What follows is largely my summary of his main points.
One of the problems with “translating” the Gospel to pagan Europe was that pagan Europeans were, well, pagan. And being pagan, they often just added Christ and the Christian saints to their already existing pantheon of gods. This tendency can be seen in the Icelandic Landnanabok, where it is said that “Helgi the Lean ‘believed in Christ, but invoked Thor in matters of seafaring and dire necessity’” (Triumph of Christianity 196). In this sense, what often happened in pagan Europe was similar to what happened in ancient Israel. The Israelites worshipped YHWH, but often just associated Him with Egyptian bulls gods, or with the Canaanite god Baal.
Such pagan syncretism is almost inevitable. Although many pagans threw away their pagan gods and followed Christ alone, many other pagans simply incorporated Christ and the saints into their fundamental pagan worldview. It is as true today as it was then. Just look at our politics today:
there are both conservative Christians and liberal Christians who truly follow Christ, and whose political views are shaped by their Christian worldview. At the same time, there are also conservatives and liberals who claim to follow Christ, but who go a step further, and have actually tried to mold Christ into their given political image by claiming that Jesus was…a capitalist, socialist, pro-second amendment, pro-gun control, etc. I think in such instances, it is just a modern form of syncretism, but instead of incorporating Christ into a pagan religion, it is incorporating Christ into an Enlightenment, secularized political philosophy. It is an incredibly easy thing to do…be it a pagan European 1500 years ago, or a modern secular-pagan today.
Having said that, one modern objection to Christianity (as can be seen in the writings of some of the “new Atheists”) is that it seems to be so fundamentally pagan, or at least sound so pagan. I mean really, blood sacrifices? Dying and rising gods? Didn’t Christianity just borrow those things from paganism? If God wanted to forgive sins, couldn’t He have just said, “Bam! Your sins are forgiven!”? Why was it necessary to have a crucifixion, and then describe it as a “sacrifice,” hence sounding so incredibly pagan?
The answer to that objection is actually quite simple: Christ came during a time when paganism ruled the day and was the lens through which ancient society interpreted everything. The Christian message may “sound pagan” at times, but that is because the Gospel was originally addressed…to pagans. As Rodney Stark writes:
“That’s the whole point. The message of the Crucifixion sent to Greco-Roman pagans was: ‘Christ died for your sins!’ Forget offerings of a hundred or even a thousand cattle! The Christian ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). That message spoke powerfully and eloquently to a culture that took sacrifice, especially blood sacrifice, as fundamental to pleasing the gods—some of the Oriental faiths used blood from sacrificial animals to ‘wash away’ an initiate’s sins” (82).
Of course, some of the language in Christianity is going to be similar to pagan mythology. The early Christians were explaining the significance of what happened with Christ to a pagan audience. As Stark says, “the Christ story fulfilled every element of the classical hero of how a human rose to become a god” (83). C.S. Lewis described the story of Christ as a myth that had happened in history. The Greek myths may have had similar stories, but everyone knew they had never happened in history. Along comes Christ, and those “make believe” stories intersect with the Jesus Christ of history.
This communicating of the Gospel in a language that the hearers can understand is called divine accommodation. It begins with God communicating and revealing Himself in way that people can comprehend, and then Christians, in their spreading of the Gospel, do the same thing in whatever culture they are in. The fact is, human beings are always limited in their understanding, and if you want to anyone to learn anything, you have to start with where they are.
God’s initial revelation to the Hebrews was couched in the language and symbolism of the ancient Near East. The gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John were aimed at Jewish audiences, and therefore the writers filled their gospels with quotes and allusions to the Hebrew Bible. They thus told the story of Christ within the idiom of Israel’s history. That’s how communication is effective. And that is why so often Christian monks “translated,” so to speak, the Gospel in the language of pagan Europe. That was the most effective way of communicating the Gospel.
There will be one more post on Christianity in the Byzantine Age. I’ll deal with the likes of Charlemagne and the rise and threat of Islam.
