Discuss Theology

It Takes a Monk to Save a Civilization
Ben House

Art historian and critic Kenneth Clark wrote, “It is hard to believe that
for quite a long time — almost a hundred years — western Christianity
survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, rising seven hundred
feet out of the sea.” Skellig Michael is a rocky island located off the
southwestern coast of Ireland. It was one of the outposts of early Irish
Christians, who in the 5th and 6th centuries rescued European
civilization.
This took place in a time when the old order and power of the Roman Empire
had completely disintegrated and when illiterate, pagan, barbaric hordes,
who were devoid of understanding the Greco-Roman heritage, were
rearranging Europe. While Greece lay in ruins and Rome was being pillaged
and plundered, the best of their accomplishments were preserved only in
books.
But books too are perishable. Great libraries, like that of ancient
Alexandria, were vulnerable to destruction, and with the destruction of
books, the knowledge, thought, and poetry of whole cultures were subject
to extinction.
For a time, about all that stood between the preservation of European
civilization or its descent into a true dark age was a hardy band of Irish
monks who were dedicated to copying books and evangelizing people. Usually
we think of the Irish as the victims of colonization and oppression. In
their later history, English policy toward the Irish ranged from trying to
absorb them to trying to obliterate them. Just as the Emerald Isle is on
the edge of Europe, so the Irish have been on the edge of the progress and
forward tug of history — most of the time.
Although there was never a time when Irish armies occupied Europe or Irish
leaders dominated the councils of power, there was a time when Ireland did
save civilization. We recognize the name of Patrick, but most know little
about his successors, like Columcille and Columbanus, who spread the
Christian message beyond Ireland to Britain and then to continental
Europe. Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, is a
delightful account of this history.
Two things were done primarily by the Irish during the 5th and 6th
centuries. First, they carefully copied and preserved the books that fell
into their hands. Latin literature would have been lost without the Irish;
furthermore, as Cahill points out, “there would have perished in the west
not only literacy but all the habits of mind that encourage thought.”
Second, they established monasteries all over Europe that were devoted to
preaching, teaching, and ministering to the local populations. These two
activities point out the way for Christians to take dominion over the
future.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who teaches history at a
junior college. He was bemoaning the fact that his college students could
not locate key American cities on United States maps. I smiled and said,
“Well, my tenth graders are struggling to understand Augustine’s City of
God.” Literature has faced extinction in our own era, but in a way
different from the past. In the ancient world, rare manuscripts were
destroyed; in our age they have been crowded out by the abundance of
technology and paper and by philosophies of education that oppose
knowledge. But in Christian school and homeschool settings, books have
been rediscovered.
There have been some useful textbooks written in the past several decades
since the Christian education movement emerged. But more important,
students are now reading books in the junior high and high school levels
that I never read even in college. I repeatedly learned about the
Federalist Papers, but only after I taught in a Christian school did I
begin actually studying the Federalist Papers. At its best, much of my
education seemed to better train me to watch Jeopardy! or to play Trivial
Pursuit than to think.
In this modern reformation, Christian educators debate whether it is best
to read the ancient pagans or the early church fathers. Further debates
occur between those who favor Cromwell’s secretary, John Milton, and those
who favor the Italian Catholic poet Dante; advocates for Shakespeare lock
horns with devotees of Spenser; and some even assign Hemingway and
Faulkner to the disgust of those who prefer Tolkien and Lewis. We more
eclectic types try to assign them all. But the debates continue amongst
Christian educators. In language, disagreements break out over whether to
teach Greek, Hebrew, Latin, or some modern language. Even logic teachers
differ over whether you begin with fallacies or syllogistic validity.
Isn’t this great? Isn’t this fun?
In the Christian education community, we are producing a generation of
graduates who are well read in Greek and Roman classics, Patristic
theology, Reformed treatises, the Great Books tradition, the Medieval
Trivium, and much more. There is no uniformity imposed by a statist decree
telling these students what to read and telling teachers what to teach.
Instead, we are experiencing the rise of a generation of thinking
students, who have traveled all over the intellectual globe. They will
have achieved Mortimer Adler’s ideal of having read the best ideas that
men have thought and written. In one sense of the word, they will be
Renaissance men and women. But in another sense, because they are viewing
these books through scriptural lenses, they are Reformation men and women.
Imagine an iron-sharpened generation of people who go beyond Trivial
Pursuit to actually discuss issues. Imagine political debate where
Christians grounded in Hamilton’s and Madison’s views of the Constitution
are sparring with other Christians holding to Patrick Henry’s objections
to the Constitution. Imagine your children fighting over whether Calvin or
Augustine was the greatest theologian. Imagine young people who will be in
awe of us who lived in the same era as Rushdoony, Van Til, and Bahnsen.
Some of us struggle to resist watching the evening political talk shows.
When we give in to the temptation and watch the shows, we rejoice in
seeing conservative Christian spokesmen locking horns with liberals in
debate. Such a witness and voice is good, but a few Christian ideas touted
by talking heads squeezed in between toothpaste commercials in a national
debate will not change the culture. Books will do that.
Today’s Monasteries
Likewise, churches will change our culture. Churches should strive to be
the monasteries of today. Monasteries are not well understood in our
culture. We picture drab, dark places where hooded monks went about
singing chants. Instead, monasteries were centers of Christian activism.
J.O. Westwood describes monasteries as
schools, all the way from kindergarten to university, hospitals, hotels,
publishing houses, libraries, law courts, art academies, and
conservatories of music. They were houses of refuge, places of pilgrimage,
marts for barter and exchange, centers of culture, social foci, newspaper
offices, and distilleries. A score of other public and practical things
were they: garrison, granary, orphan asylum, frontier fort, post office,
savings bank, and general store for surrounding agricultural districts. We
carelessly imagine the early monasteries as charnel-houses of cant and
ritual — whereas they were the best-oiled machines for the advancement of
science, the living accelerators of human thinking, precedent to the
University of Paris.
Referring to the works of the monks in the Middle Ages in his book The
Making of Europe, Christopher Dawson said, “The greatest names of the age
are the names of monks — St. Benedict and St. Gregory, the two Columbas,
Bede and Boniface, Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, and Dunstan, and it is to
the monks that the great cultural achievements of the age are due, whether
we look at the preservation of ancient culture, the conversion of new
peoples or the formation of new centres of culture in Ireland and
Northumbria and the Carolingian Empire.”
Christian churches actually are doing the work of monasteries today,
without the baggage of some of the errors of the Medieval time. Christian
churches and voluntary agencies provide the best social services for our
society today. Without endorsing President Bush’s program for aiding
faith-based organizations, it is reassuring that the national debate
recognizes that Christian organizations are the most effective means of
dealing with poverty, drug abuse, and family problems. Christians are the
ones providing the educational reforms (at no cost to taxpayers), music
instruction, marriage counseling, English language instruction, and other
needs of society.
There remain those churches that are merely stained glass edifices open to
the public only for a few hours on Sunday mornings. But, some great
Christian works are being done in places that do not look like traditional
churches. The news coverage of the recent hurricane relief efforts in
Louisiana and surrounding states could not help but highlight Christian
ministries to the evacuees.
The greatest events going on in our day are not happening in cabinet
meetings at the White House or in caucuses on Capitol Hill or in executive
board rooms on Wall Street. Civilization is being saved by faithful
pastors, dedicated Christian teachers, moms and dads who are teaching
their children about Jesus, small name book publishers, newsletters,
magazines, and websites dedicated to Christian causes, and to a host of
other Samaritan-type works happening across the land.
Thomas Cahill contrasted the Romans, who were unable to save or salvage
their once grand civilization, with the Irish saints, who changed the
direction of history. Cahill says, “The twenty-first century, prophesied
Malraux, will be spiritual or it will not be. If our civilization is to be
saved — forget about our civilization, which, as Patrick would say, may
pass ‘in a moment like a cloud or smoke that is scattered by the wind’ —
if we are to be saved, it will not be by Romans but by saints.”
We could spend a lot of time bemoaning the legion of dangers to our
republic, our civilization, and our way of life. Hillary just might get
elected in 2008, the economy might implode, and gay marriages might become
the rage. Congress might not pass and the president might not sign some
mythical piece of legislation ending all bad things and promoting all good
things. Don’t despair. Instead, teach a Sunday school class, support a
Christian school or mission work, buy some Christian books, give away some
Christian books, go to prayer meetings, witness to someone, encourage a
faithful minister, and pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in
heaven.
Arend van Leeuwen’s book Christianity in World History ends with this
note: “We live in a time of crisis: and krisis is a biblical word. In the
Bible it signifies ‘judgment’, but along with that, ‘justice’ and
‘salvation’. The Servant of the Lord ‘will not fail or be discouraged till
he has established justice (krisis) in the earth; and the coastlands wait
for his torah,’ (Is. 42:1ff.; Mt. 12:18ff.).” Holding on to a few acres of
rocky and jagged islands, Christians once persevered for a century,
laboring to see the faith spread. We here in this land have so much more. [posted to me from Steve Johnson]