Lux Lucet

Christ and Civilization by John W. Robbins (Unicoi, Tennessee: The Trinity Foundation, 48 pages).

Many in the West have a vague sense that something is seriously wrong with our civilization. Predictions of decline and collapse are not especially new. They go back as least as far as Oswald Spengler’s 1918 Decline of the West. But the years following the 2008 financial crisis have seen anxiety about the long-term viability of Western civilization go mainstream. Government surveillance grows. Individual freedom shrinks. National debt spirals out of control, while politicians and central bankers talk openly about banning the use of cash, the better to control a financial system that threatens to collapse. There seems to be a general loss of trust in the mainstream institutions of society, and the rise of the alternative internet media is one sign of this.

In the opinion of the reviewer, people are right to be concerned about the future of the West. An unstable and unsustainable financial system, increasingly lawless government, and the decline of public morality are all hallmarks of our civilization in the early 21st century. Someone once made the witty observation that things which cannot go on forever, don’t. And from all appearances, the West seems to be on an unsustainable course. The question seems to be when, not if a major systemic shock will occur.

One of the few hopeful signs during this degenerate time has been the rise of the internet, which has provided a forum for commentary which in earlier times never would have seen the light of day. As one with a special interest in finance, this reviewer has been delighted at the remarkable amount of interesting and knowledgeable commentary about the ongoing financial crisis that is to be found on various blogs and You Tube channels.

But while many bloggers pour their heart and soul into documenting the decline of the West and advising people how to protect themselves against it, there is something missing from what they have to say. In this reviewer’s opinion, their biggest problem is that they lack a clear understanding of what made the West great in the first place and what has been the cause of its decline.

Christ and Civilization by John W. Robbins is the antidote to all that. Writing in the lucid, concise style that is characteristic of him, Robbins takes there reader on a tour of history beginning in ancient Greece and Rome, carrying through to the middle ages and the Reformation, and ending in modern times. This would be an impressive feat for any book. But what makes this book all the more remarkable is that Robbins accomplishes all this in the space of a mere 48 pages.

Originally published in The Trinity Review as an essay by the same name, Christ and Civilization posits that the West owes its origin and its success, not to Greece and Rome, but rather to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. Form most modern westerners, subject as they are to secularist propaganda, this likely will come as a new thought. And herein lies the importance of Robbins’ work.

Christ and Civilization falls neatly into three sections: The World Christ Entered, The World After Christ, and The Christian Reformation.

In the first of these, “The World Christ Entered,” Robbins details how the ancient world was not what many people suppose. From a distance of 2,000 years, many in the West hold an idealized view of Greece and Rome. For some, classical civilization is all about marble statues, beautiful architecture and the intellectual brilliance of Athenian philosophers. But for most people who lived in the ancient world, life, in the famous words of Thomas Hobbs, was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Immorality was rampant in Greece and Rome. During the original 18th century excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, people were scandalized by the pornographic statuary and frescos found in the buried towns. Given man’s corrupt nature, this really should not have come as a surprise. Speaking about classical religion, Robbins comments, “Temple prostitution was commonplace. The name of the Greek city of Corinth, a center of religious devotion, became synonymous with sexual immorality. To “corinthianize” was to engage in the most perverted and debauched sexual practices. In the pagan culture of religious Rome, homosexuality was commonplace and accepted” (Christ and Civilization, 9).

“The World After Christ” details the limited success and massive failure of the church in the centuries following the birth of Christ. Although Christianity did have some salutary effects on society, these were fairly muted. On the other hand, the failure of the church to remain pure in its doctrine had disastrous and wide-spread consequences. Of particular interest in this section is Robbins’ treatment of the emperor Constantine. Viewed as a Christian hero by many, Constantine comes in for sharp criticism from Robbins. He writes, “Constantine did not establish Christianity as the only permissible religion of the Empire (an act that would have been Antichristian); he established the Catholic Church as the only permitted church in the Empire, a different Antichristian act”,…Constantine did not establish Christianity because Constantine, quite frankly, did not know what Christianity is” (31, 32). The first “Christian” emperor, it turns out, had no clothes. And his flawed actions, based as they were on flawed ideas, helped usher in the superstitious confusion that dominated the thinking of the Middle Ages.

Under the heading “The Christian Reformation,” Robbins begins, “It was not until the Christian Reformation of the sixteenth century that the Gospel of Jesus Christ feed Western Europe from the mélange of pagan and Roman Church superstition that had prevailed in the Middle Ages. Continuing in this section, Robbins makes the important point that, “The first principle of the Reformation was divine, noncontradictory, propositional revelation…But it was not simply on the rejection of contradiction that the Reformation rested; it rested on the Holy Scriptures, that is, the written revelation of God. The Bible alone is the noncontradictory revelation of God, and God has put all his revelation in writing. Luther so emphasized this idea that it became known as the Schriftprinzip: the writing principle” (38, 39).

Luther, as Robbins tells us, did not set out to start a new civilization. But that was God’s intention. As Robbins puts it,

In the sixteenth century, God caused the Gospel of justification by faith alone to be widely preached and believed in Western Europe for the first time, using Luther and Calvin and many others to accomplish his purpose of building his kingdom. God blessed his people in Western Europe and America beyond anything they could have imagined, and his blessing spilled over into society at large, creating what we now call Western civilization.

All these things – the things we call Western civilization – were added to the European and American Christians, on an historically unprecedented scale, just as Christ had promised. And they were added because their priorities were straight; They believed the gospel, seeking first Kingdom of God and his imputed righteousness, not their own righteousness or prosperity (45, 46).

Toward the very end of his book, Robbins makes the following observation,

Despite the enormous progress made in Western Europe and the United States since the sixteenth century, a resurgence of ancient and medieval paganism now threatens Western civilization…resurgent medieval religions of Catholicism, Orthodoxism, Islam, and Judaism are being added to the revival of ancient paganism in the twentieth century. God alone can prevent their bloody triumph, and if he does so, it will be by means that have always confounded the world: He will once again cause the Gospel of justification by faith alone to be widely preached and believed (46-48).

What Robbins understands, and what many other commentators both secular and religious do not, is that Christianity, far from being the enemy of freedom, is its one true source and only sure defense. This book is highly recommended both for Christians and for those who are not of the faith. Christians will find their faith strengthened. And both believers and non-believers alike will find their assumptions about Western civilization challenged.