I don't know if I can say that I was really blown away by McCulloch's Reformation two years ago, but it made reading Durant's books seem very dated and almost simplistic. I had high expectations for Christianity this summer, making it my major reading project of the summer. And reading it screen by screen on an ipod touch added significantly to the feeling of major task. The ability to highlight and review through the Kindle website, really added to the feeling of accomplishment, however, and made the summer's major read feel like something special. It certainly took enough time.
McCulloch captures the main theme of the book in the introduction: "I live with the puzzle of wondering how something so apparently crazy can be so captivating to millions of other members of m species" but also "I still appreciate the seriousness which a religious mentality brings to the mystery and misery of human existence." And that's where we part company, too, as I am just more taken by the craziness of it. Let's begin with the fact that both Jesus, the main character (kinda, sorta), and Paul, who really founded the religion--and who essentially paid no attention to Jesus's life or to what he said--were both flat wrong. They both spoke with great urgency about the imminent end of the world, and the following believers were left in the tough position of explaining to themselves why the world didn't end, after all.
Of course, politics underlies the whole story--going back to David, at least, with the establishment of the temple in Jerusalem to consolidate his power and his rule after usurping the kingship of Israel. Bring it through Josiah whose priest "discovers" the Deuteronomic code in 640 BCE after ursurping the throne from Amon of Judah, and Constantine's vision on the Malvern Bridge and his use of Christianity in consolidating his power, and Clovis adopting Martin of Tours as his personal saint because of the power that it give him when he begins to unite northern Europe under Frankish rule.
Central to understanding the history of Christianity is the compromise reached at Chalcedon, based first on the homousion controversy, inadvertently spurred by Constantine at Nicea in 325 CD, with a major battle between the miaphysites (monophysites), who argued that the three persons of the Trinity (which is probably never mentioned in any part of the books that make up the modern Bible) share one nature, while the dyophysites insist that Jesus had two natures--one human as the person Jesus and the other divine as the Logos. And add the Tome of Leo that declares Jesus as perfect in divine nature and perfect in human nature as well. It al seems to technical and even irrelevant to make these distinctions, and yet they underlie centuries of schism and violence.
Another main argument runs through the area of authority--does it come from the line of apostolic succession, from scripture, from faith, from personal revelation. One conclusion is that the Reformation represents Augustine's doctrine of salvation over his doctrine of the church. Luther, following Augustine--and Paul before him, emphasizes the complete depravity and worthlessness of man--original sin--and the inability of man to do anything about it except through grace. This, of course, stems from Paul's vision on the road to Damascus and his developing a whole Christ centered theology without having much reference to Jesus's life or teachings.
Even though Paul lays the foundation of the religion, it is Peter who becomes the center of a crazy "mana" centered practices that leads to the formation of the papacy, which finally declared in 1870 (in the midst of being attacked by the Italian army and most of the delegates to the conference had left) that it could be infallible, even though the office had passed through innumerable schisms and moral lapses.
It's important to realize, too, that religion as a personal choice is a relatively recent phenomenon, becoming embraced primarily in England and Holland before becoming institutionalized in the America in the early 18th century. The story of Christianity, especially after Constantine's conversion, is a story of "territorial communality" leading to condemnation, execution, and wholesale war.
In the end, though, there is just too much to cover, even in a thousand pages, to do real justice to the topic. It was a good read and very informative, but so many areas had to be glossed over or superficially described. My own final thought echo Kant when he said that the "Enlightenment is mankind's exit from self-incurred immaturity." This is a book about a particular kind of self-imposed immaturity that helped shape the culture and society that I live in. How crazy is that?
Author: MacCulloch, Diarmaid
Date Published: 2010
Length: 1015 pp
electronic print
