"It is impossible to understand Christianity without studying the history of Christianity."

An excerpt from "Christianity and the History of Culture" | Christopher Dawson | From Chapter 2 of The Formation of Christendom

The history of Christianity is the history of a divine intervention in history, and we cannot study it apart from the history of culture in the widest sense of the word. For the word of God was first revealed to the people of Israel and became embodied in a law and a society. Secondly, the word of God became Incarnate in a particular person at a particular moment of history, and thirdly, this process of human redemption was carried on in the life of the Church which was the new Israel--the universal community which was the bearer of divine revelation and the organ by which man participated in the new life of the Incarnate Word.

Thus Christianity has entered into the stream of human history and the process of human culture. It has become culturally creative, for it has changed human life and there is nothing in human thought and action which has not been subjected to its influence, while at the same time it has suffered from the limitations and vicissitudes that are inseparable from temporal existence.

Now there are those who reject this mingling of religion and history, or Christianity and culture, since they believe that religion is concerned with God rather than man, and with the absolute and eternal rather than the historical and the transitory. We certainly need to recognize how important this aspect of religion is and how man has a natural sense of divine transcendence. And we know from the history of religious thought that we do actually find religious men of this kind--men who seek to transcend human nature by the flight of the Alone to the Alone, in the words of the Neo-Platonist philosopher, and who find the essence of religion in the contemplation of pure being or of that which is beyond being.

But this is not Christianity. Although Christianity does not deny the religious value of contemplation or mystical experience, its essential nature is different, it is a religion of Revelation, Incarnation and Communion; a religion which unites the human and the divine and sees in history the manifestation of the divine purpose towards the human race.

It is impossible to understand Christianity without studying the history of Christianity. And this, as I see it, involves a good deal more than the study of ecclesiastical history in the traditional sense. It involves the study of two different processes which act simultaneously on mankind in the course of time. On the one hand, there is the process of culture formation and change which is the subject of anthropology, history and the allied disciplines; and on the other there is the process of revelation and the action of divine grace which has created a spiritual society and a sacred history, though it can be studied only as a part of theology and in theological terms.

In Christian culture these two processes come together in an organic unity, so that its study requires the close cooperation of Theology and History. It is obvious that this is a difficult task, but it is a very necessary one, since there is no other way of studying Christianity as a living force in the world of men and it is of the essence of Christianity that it is such a force and not an abstract ideology or system of ideas. Thus the history of Christian culture differs in nature from Church History. The latter has been for centuries a highly specialized study, which stands somewhat outside historical categories. There is a sense in which the Church as a theological concept stands outside and above history.

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Comments

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Christopher Dawson's book offers a great span of subjects but I'll focus on one that is relevant to Catholics since it impacts our present time and the future: The Motu Propio Summorum Pontificum by Benedict XVI written in July 7 2007, on Roman Liturgy prior to the reform of 1970.

We read the pope delayed finilizing, signing it due to an alleged hesitation. At the same time is worth noting that Dawson ventures to label it as, perhaps, the best Ratzinger has done as Supreme Pontiff. I truly believe it is the appropiate conclusion.

I compare this Pastoral Letter with that which Paul VI had to deal with at a time when in July 1968 he gave his milestone Encyclical Humanae Viate which some labeled as 'the stubborn truth'and was judged as 'breeding corrosive criticism'. Against bad advice he surprised the Commission to study the subject by giving the Magisterium a new landmark.

This body of enacted rules is worth studying in relationship to:
-Comparison to the 1962 Missal of Beatus John XXIII.
-Observation of subtleties by Benedict XVI pertaining to various degrees of allowances and or advice to different authorities.
-Why the ruling carry an appearance of utter carefulness that would hint, in a certain degree a suggestion rather than a mandate.

Carl: I admired greatly your interview of Dr.Birzer about Dawson.