non-metaphysical stephen

I’m still working my way through chapter 2 of Jacques Ellul’s Subversion–reading, re-reading, letting it sit in the back of my mind, etc. In the first 2/3 of the chapter, he argues that two of the main reasons for Christianity’s loss of identity were the shift from revelation to theology and the shift from being a small group to a large, organized insitution. Lots to think about (and hopefully blog about).

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading scholarship on Bartolomé de Las Casas. Sometimes two articles a day — quite a bit for what should only be a 5-8 page section of a chapter in a dissertation. I had never heard of Las Casas until Ellul mentioned him as an example of Christianity at its finest, alongside St. Francis. And I don’t understand how I had never heard of this man whom I now realize was a powerhouse for the Christian faith.

I supposed that what attracts me most about Las Casas was his rejection of the nationalist paradigm of his time. He wasn’t a relativist, in the sense that he did believe Christianity was superior to the indigenous religions. But he refused to accept that the Americans were less human or civilized for not having European-style culture. He was even able to see how human sacrifice could be seen from within the American systems as a form of worship rather than a form of savagery. Not that he believed it was okay (although he acknowledged the parallelism with the Abraham and Isaac story), but that he was able to see it as a form of sincere worship.

In fact, Las Casas was able to see the Americans as being more civilized than the Spaniards, whom he accused of the very butchery and greed they attributed to the Americans. (Montaigne made the same accusation against the Europeans in his essay On Cannibals.) Las Casas even claimed that the pre-conquest civilizations were more impressive than those of ancient Greece and Rome–the same Greece and Rome whose philosophers were being enlisted to justify Spanish policies.

Here was a man for whom Christianity was central, and not to be confused with accidents of culture. He understood that Western Culture did not make Spanish conquest right–just as Roman culture did not make their conquest of Spain centuries earlier right. In fact, the culture wants to maintain the status quo more than to establish justice: how else could Spain praise their ancestors’ heroism for resisting the Romans without seeing the parallels between Spanish resistance to Rome and American resistance to Spain?

One of the scholars called Las Casas an example of “radical Christianity.” May we all be so radical in our lifetimes. Perhaps we truly could change the world.

Today I read Las Casas’ introductory materials to his In Defense of the Indians (the material he used in his debate against Sepúlveda). One of his claims against the publication of Sepúlveda’s book is that the previous pronouncements by politicians and clergy against mistreating the Indians had had no effect, and the publication of a book that sanctions such mistreatment on scholarly and theological grounds would only embolden the colonizers to continue their evil. In a word, Sepúlveda’s book would be dangerous because it tells the listeners exactly what they want to hear.

When I read this, I was reminded of Ellul’s digression (in chapter 2 of The Subversion of Christianity) regarding the power of intellectual authority: people will listen and will accept what intellectuals say, even when what is being said is incorrect. Thus the church was led to adopt policies that were in contradiction to the gospel proclamation but which seemed to further the growth of the church.

I’m not sure to what extent this situation is true in the USA. To a certain extent it certainly is true. And yet the USA has also had a long anti-intellectual bias. Many people trust their preachers more than they trust scholars. But in these instances, the people assume the preachers have more authority than the scholars–perhaps because they are presumably more immersed in the Bible and in prayer and have the anointing of the Holy Spirit upon them. So, the effect is the same: we accept the words of authorities (that is, people whom WE recognize as having authority) whenever they tell us what we already want to hear.

God have mercy on us.

I’ve been reading Las Casas‘ Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and after the initial horror of the history died down (but God grant that it never go away completely), I realized that I was reading exactly what Ellul had said about the powers. Here were concrete examples of the way wealth and political power control the way human beings associate with each other. Everything the Spaniards did to the Americans was a result not of Christian love but of the love of money and power. These two factors actively determined the interactions between the cultures. These are the powers of the air at work in human life. Frightening stuff.

It also makes me think about Ellul’s contention (and Kierkegaard’s before him) that Christianity had long been dead in Europe. For how could this happen in the middle of the Renaissance, when medieval Christianity was still in operation alongside Renaissance optimism about humanity? The only explanation seems to be that the culture had long been, to a great extent, Christian in name only. Renaissance Spain was what we might call ethnically Christian, but not truly Christian. And the same would go for all of Europe, I wager. Just as it does for the modern US of A.

God have mercy on the souls of those destroyed by their greed in the name of the Church.