Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

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

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Rapt: Attention the Focused Life

"Those who learn to control their inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."

That pretty much explains the book in one sentence. The rest of the book elaborates on the theme over and over, coming back to it in different ways. It's the "Power of Positive Thinking" for the first decade of the Twenty first century. That doesn't make what Gallagher say any less true, but's its really just re-covering ground that been covered over and over before. It's one in a spate of new books that combines positive thinking with neuroscience and meditation, like The Happyness Hypothesis or Mindfulness or Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience. As Grayling writes in his review of Wisdom: "polysyllabic confirmation of what common sense and received wisdom knew long ago." While I want to believe in this literature and its insights, it leaves me unsatisfied and unconvinced in the long run. I've spent a lot of time working at meditation and visualization, thought stoppage, and mind control, and somehow it just doesn't really lead to a better life. I've tried reframing my negative emotions and replacing them with positive thoughts, but I'm still the same old putz that I always was--quick to anger, slow to forgive, slovenly in habit. Sometimes I've been able to direct my attention to goals over a relatively long period of time--like a couple of years ago when I had a really satisfying season riding brevets--but most of the time I stew that I'm not getting any closer to any of them.

That being said, Gallagher does have good advice about how we should lead our lives even if we can't follow it. "Optimal human experience" kicks in when we're completely focused on doing something that's both enjoyable and that's also challenging enough to be "just manageable."

Again, much of her advice brings on the "duh" response: "The first step toward any relationship is focusing on someone who returns the favor. If the bond is to become intimate, both parties must commit not only to paying rapt attention to each other, but also to the effort of seeing that person's often very different world which entails lots of communication."  "The antidote to leisure time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do to your workday." "Nothing is as important as I think it is when I'm focusing on it." "Aware of our limited focusing capacity, I take pains to ensure that electronic media and machines aren't in control of mine."

If nothing else, the book has pointed me back to William James where a lot of Gallagher's thinking is grounded. I want to go back to find out what he has to say. I do seem to go back to James, Emerson, and Thoreau a lot. That doesn't make me a shallow person, does it? Or does it?

Author: Galagher, Winifred

Date Published: 2009

Length: 244 pp & 7hr 45min

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Narrator: Merlington, Laurel

The Little Ice Age

Fagan argues that many of the important movements and events of modern Europe --and probably the rest of the world as well--can be traced back to changes in the climate that left the world colder and wetter than it had been in the late medieval ages or than it is today. The late medieval ages, known as the monde plein and called the "Medieval Warm Period" by Fagan, lasting from about 800 to 1300 CE, were fairly warm and conducive to cereal crops throughout Europe. This enabled the age of Viking exploration and raiding and population increases all around Europe, encourage mass migrations of peoples and the great cathedral construction going on. Around 1300--more specifically the winters of 1315 and 1316--the climate turned much colder, leading to massive crop failures. Since the vast majority of peasants lived on a subsistence level, starvation, disease and death remained the norm for quite some time. This marked the beginning of what Fagan calls "The Little Ice Age," a period of extreme fluctuation and climactic extremes that lasted until about 1850. While a few good harvest years might occur, many or most years had lower crop yields. Fagan explains a number of mechanisms for these variations, especially the NAO index or positioning of the normal high pressure/low pressure gradients, the movement of the Gulf Stream which normally warms Europe, and volcanic eruptions reducing the amount of sunlight striking the earth.

Fagan explores a number of historical trends and events that happened in reaction to the little Ice Age. Britain and the Netherlands adopted more efficient agricultural practices  that helped ease the burden of famine, if not poverty, in later times. He also traces the development of the Black Death during this time which may have reduced the population of Europe by a half to two-thirds. The British developed a large fishing fleet after the Pope approved the eating of fish during Lent. Consequently, the British gained widespread control of the seas and the Hanseatic League declined precipitously in economic importance. He also discusses the weather underlying the French Revolution and the Irish potato famine in a particularly bitter denunciation of the failure of the British government to relieve the suffering of the Irish. The final chapters close with the possibilities of global warming: "We can only imagine the potential death toll in an era when climactic swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable because of human interference."

I really wanted to like this book since it had a lot of important things to say and it presented a lot of information in a new light. But I got the feeling that a lot of it was history channel lite. It covered a lot of information for a long period of time in a short amount of space. The narrative ties together a number of widely disparate events hence reducing the unity of the arguments and explanations. A lot of the narrative is also fairly recursive, repeating information that had been give earlier. So while the book did cover a lot of information, somehow it just wasn't all that satisfying.

Author: Fagan, Brian

Date Published: 2000

Length: 217 pp

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Look Homeward, Angel

Be very careful about revisiting the classics of your youth. I tore through Thomas Wolfe when I was 20-21 years old and thought that Look Homeward Angel was the Great American Novel. Now I am greatly disappointed with it and not quite sure why.

Maybe since I read this together with Time and the River and You can't Go Home Again and The Web and the Rock, I thought that it was about Eugene Gant and I identified with the writer's life back then. I even took up smoking a tobacco pipe after seeing Gregory Peck as F. Scott. But while Eugene dominates the last half of the book, it's really about the family, which is a lot more dysfunctional than I remember. Or maybe I saw Gant, the father, as an overblown George Robert. His rants about "Mountain Grills, Mountain Grills!" has the flavor of some of dad's put downs of the Panhandle, although he never really denigrated granddad in the manner of Gant excoriating the Pentlands.

As an interesting aside, one article that I came across derives the "Mountain Grill" epithet from Edmund Spencer, for whom a grill was a porcine fellow who ate all the time, who seemed to derive that from Homer. Is this another instance where Wolfe throws in subtle literary allusions, taking delight in his own comparative language? And so could a comparison be made to T. S. Eliot shoring up the ruins of his life with literary allusions in the Waste Land? I was certain struck with the similarities at some points with The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man when the book hyper-jumps into stream of consciousness, as when Eugene and his father are walking to the movie theatre.

Perhaps part of my disappointment comes from the narration of the audiobook. Much of the book's jumping back and forth between characters and thoughts is signaled in print by paragraph breaks which is missing in the audio version, making it needlessly confusing at times--a pause, a change in voice and/or inflection might help here. It's just a book that does not do well in a audio version.

Ultimately, all the characters in the book, including or especially Eugene--are buffoons. In that regard, it's a comic novel. The brunt of the comedy often comes with Gant's heaping of abuse and invective on Eliza and here family that is at once humorous but also selfish, mean spirited, and cruel. It's a love less marriage, almost complete devoid of any tenderness, and this is reflected in the way the children end up. Only Daisy seems to escape. Grover dies young; Ben becomes hateful and cynical until he, too, dies. Helen verges on hysteria, and Luke has a load of anger lying just become the surface that occasionally explodes on other members of the family. Eugene also comes off as both hateful and naive. His explosion against the family when he gets drunk for the first time is probably even the most hateful and selfish episode in the book, and he becomes so taken up with himself and his sense of self-entitlement. So is "Look Homeward, Angel" really about adolescent angst and is that why I was so taken with it?

Finally, what to make of the "O Lost" passages? Are they literary and overblown flourishes? They just seem a bit silly now.

Interestingly, as I pick up the book and read the print version, the voices speak more naturally to me, the characters seem more familiar, the asides more realistic. I should really go at it again, this time solely as print, and see how it strikes me.

Author: Wolfe, Thomas

Date Published: 1929

Length: 22hr 22min

Narrator: Sowers, Scott

In Search of the Dark Ages

This book was written to accompany Michael Woods' first history special for the BBC back in the late 80's, and it has all the virtues and vices of a television script. It is written in a breezy style and is very readable, but it is pretty shallow in depth. However, I did learn about about the rulers of Britain from the Roman conquest until the coming of William the Conqueror, and I have a better idea why the British think of themselves as Anglo Saxon, even though the latest genetic evidence shows that the majority of the people have genes that predate even the coming of the Celts.

Woods begins with Boudica's revolt, showing how Roman many of the major cities in Britain had become. Even when the Roman government fell--after Constantine (the Brit, not the Great) took off to the mainland to try and claim the Roman empire as his own--the British still saw themselves as heirs to the Roman government and way of life, at least until the conquest by the Danes later in the first millennium. England fell into a number of small kingdoms and chiefdoms, with the Angles, the Saxons, and later the Jutes invited to serve as mercenaries for some of the warlords and kings. This was also the period that produced the Arthurian legends, but Woods can find no concrete evidence for Arthur's existence, considering the legends really more the product of a later myth making and story telling time. The Angles and the Saxons slowly gain power as Britain coalesces around three major areas: West Saxons, East Angles, and Mercia, with Northumbria kind of a wild card.

The book is really speculation on some of the major personalities of British history during this time: Aethelstan, who was really the first king to be recognized as such by the majority of the smaller kingdom, Alfred, who ran a successful guerilla campaign after the Danes invaded the island and threatened to completely overrun it, and Ethelred the Unready, who appeared to vacillate during the last invasions of the Danes until Britain fell to Canute in 1013. But Northumbria was already pretty much under Danelaw at that point, being part of the Norse trading kingdom that extended from Denmark/Norway through England and Dublin to Greenland, fueled mainly by the slave trade.

But that Danish overlordship comes to an end in 1066 when William, himself just two generations removed from being Viking invaders in France, defeats Harold Godwinson at Hastings. Godwinson had just marched the length of England after beating off another invasion force led by Harold Hadrada. But somehow Godwinson was seen as the last of the Anglo Saxon kings that had ruled Britain since Offa's reign in the 780's. The Norman invasion represents a real turning point in power and redistribution of wealth as the thegns, former petty rulers and "nobility," become second class citizen. The people really saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons in language and culture, by then, an identity forged by Aethelstand and Alfred and fostered greatly by Bede's Ecclesiastical History. The Normans were seen then primarily as invaders and interlopers from the continent ruling a foreign peoples.

Author: Woods, Michael

Date Published: 1987

Length: 250 pp

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