Formation of Christendom by Dawson Christopher

Author:Dawson, Christopher [Dawson, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586172398
Published: 2014-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

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THE CHURCH AND THE CONVERSION

OF THE BARBARIANS

[1]

IN spite of the great achievements of the patristic period in religion and life, in theology, liturgy and art, which were embodied in the great age of Byzantine culture, the period ended catastrophically and tragically. As medieval culture ended in the Protestant Reformation and the separation of Northern Europe from Catholic unity, so the Patristic-Byzantine age ended in the loss of the Christian East. The great schisms of the fifth century after the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon led to the formation of new national churches—Nestorian in Persia and Monophysite in Egypt, Syria and Armenia.

The attempts of the Byzantine Empire to maintain religious unity took the form either of compromises which produced a new series of heresies and schisms like that of the Monothelites, or of a policy of repression which increased the disaffection of the Eastern peoples and provinces towards the Empire. Finally the whole fabric of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire in the Eastern Provinces collapsed under the sudden unexpected onslaught of the Arabs from the desert, who were welded together and launched on a career of world conquest by the new religion of Muhammad (634-644). Under his inspiration the Arab armies swept across the world from Central Asia to Spain (632-732).

This was a world revolution which changed the whole history of West Asia and North Africa, and it was undoubtedly made possible by the religious disaffection of the Eastern and Southern provinces of the Byzantine Empire. Thus the vast opportunity that was opened in the patristic age for the conversion of the oriental world to Christianity was thrown away in a series of disastrous and unnecessary disputes, and lost forever.

For when Islam had taken form and set its roots in the soil of Asia and Africa, it remained for a thousand years and more a fixed barrier against the spread of the Church in the East and in Africa. More than that, it was destined to destroy the Christianity of the homelands of the Byzantine and Greek culture in Asia Minor and to make the Christian capital itself the center of a Muhammadan empire.

Thus the coming of Islam seems to be nothing less than a divine judgment on the Byzantine world for its failure to fulfil its mission. And the cause of that failure was the same as that for which St. Ephrem, the greatest of the Syrian Fathers, reproached the Greeks in the fourth century—the unbridled lust for theological controversy which made the most sacred dogmas of the faith slogans of party warfare, sacrificed charity and unity to party spirit.

In the West the patristic age also ended tragically. Here, however, the disaster was political and social, and from the religious point of view the conquest of the Western provinces by the Northern barbarians did not put an end to the expansion of the Catholic Church. The collapse of the Empire took place earlier than in the East by two centuries at least, and this meant that it took place when Latin patristic culture was at the height of its activity in the age of St.

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