parresia

Gibbon

Gibbon on Christianity

Though Edward Gibbon may be the most sardonic of historians, a fact perhaps best demonstrated when, in the eighth chapter of his Opus, he somewhat grudgingly expatiates the growth of the Christian Church, I yet found the following statement on Christianity to be rather interesting.

A candid but rational inquiry into the progress and establishment of Christianity may be considered as a very essential part of the history of the Roman empire. While that great body was invaded by open violence or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Nor was the influence of Christianity confined to the period or to the limits of the Roman Empire. After a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe, the most distinguished portion of humankind in arts and learning as well as in arms. By the industry and zeal of the Europeans it has been widely diffused to the most distant shores of Asia and Africa, and by the means of their colonies has been firmly established from Canada to Chili in a world unknown to the ancients.

Gibbon mentions what he finds to be the common incredulity of ecclesiastical-historical documents before he writes the following:

The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

As much as I love that last sentence for its wit, I cannot help but to be reminded of the similarity to Gibbon’s words that the Protestant view of ecclesiastical history shares . Who would have thought that such a dismal view of church history-- “…inevitable mixture of error and corruption…”-- would be welcomed as corroboratory to the Protestant Christian argumentum?

It seems that Gibbon’s rather cynical, dare I say secular, view of ecclesiastical history in many ways compares well with the Protestant view of the same history. Like Gibbon, Protestants are quick to remonstrate the EO and RC views of Church infallibility based on what they, Protestants, believe to be errors, perversions, and miscalculations in the shared EO and RC history. Protestant arguments tend to tout the “total depravity” of man, contending how quickly human pride, greed, and malice perverted the Ancient church, which seems to be just what Gibbon is found stating above.

What a sharp contrast we find in Orthodoxy to the dismal, latter pronouncement of Gibbon that resonates too well with the Protestant view. Even though the EOC views ecclesiastical history just as “candidly” as Gibbon, the EOC sees, in addition to man’s sin and weakness, the Divine continuity, coherence, and preservation of Christian truth through the past two millennia in the Church. Wherein Gibbon emphasizes the human agent in history to the point of excluding the divine, wherein Protestants similarly, yet on the other side of the spectrum, de-emphasize, if you will, the human agent* in history by blaming man’s “utter inability,” Protestants leave man to add little but error and corruption, alas the Orthodox accept both the human agency and the providence of God as invisible and visible means to fidelity, which is made manifest in the Body of Christ: the Christian Church.

* By "human agent" I mean the physical church. Protestants see the physical church as fallible via the human agency (hence my nomenclature), EO see the physical church as infallible.

Posted by jeremy stock at January 31, 2003 03:58 PM