SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY
Increasing Opposition between Modern Science and Christian
Theology--The Old and the New Faith--Defence of Rational Science
against the Attacks of Christian Superstition, especially against
Catholicism--Four Periods in the Evolution of Christianity:
I. Primitive Christianity (the First Three Centuries)--The
Four Canonical Gospels--The Epistles of Paul--II. The Papacy
(Ultramontane Christianity)--Retrogression of Civilization in the
Middle Ages--Ultramontane Falsification of History--The Papacy and
Science--The Papacy and Christianity--III. The Reformation--Luther
and Calvin--The Year of Emancipation--IV. The Pseudo-Christianity
of the Nineteenth Century--The Papal Declaration of War against
Reason and Science: (_a_) Infallibility, (_b_) The Encyclica, (_c_)
The Immaculate Conception
One of the most distinctive features of the expiring century is
the increasing vehemence of the opposition between science and
Christianity. That is both natural and inevitable. In the same
proportion in which the victorious progress of modern science has
surpassed all the scientific achievements of earlier ages has the
untenability been proved of those mystic views which would subdue
reason under the yoke of an alleged revelation; and the Christian
religion belongs to that group. The more solidly modern astronomy,
physics, and chemistry have established the sole dominion of inflexible
natural laws in the universe at large, and modern botany, zoology,
and anthropology have proved the validity of those laws in the entire
kingdom of organic nature, so much the more strenuously has the
Christian religion, in association with dualistic metaphysics, striven
to deny the application of these natural laws in the province of the
so-called "spiritual life"--that is, in one section of the physiology
of the brain.
No one has more clearly, boldly, and unanswerably enunciated this
open and irreconcilable opposition between the modern scientific and
the outworn Christian view than David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest
theologian of the nineteenth century. His last work, _The Old Faith
and the New_, is a magnificent expression of the honest conviction of
all educated people of the present day who understand this unavoidable
conflict between the discredited, dominant doctrines of Christianity
and the illuminating, rational revelation of modern science--all
those who have the courage to defend the right of reason against the
pretensions of superstition, and who are sensible of the philosophic
demand for a unified system of thought. Strauss, as an honorable and
courageous free-thinker, has expounded far better than I could the
principal points of difference between "the old and the new faith."
The absolute irreconcilability of the opponents and the inevitability
of their struggle ("for life or death") have been ably presented on
the philosophic side by E. Hartmann, in his interesting work on _The
Self-Destruction of Christianity_.
When the works of Strauss and Feuerbach and _The History of the
Conflict between Religion and Science_ of J. W. Draper have been read,
it may seem superfluous for us to devote a special chapter to the
subject. Yet we think it useful, and even necessary for our purpose,
to cast a critical glance at the historical course of this great
struggle; especially seeing that the attacks of the "Church militant"
on science in general, and on the theory of evolution in particular,
have become extremely bitter and menacing of late years. Unfortunately,
the mental relaxation which has lately set in, and the rising flood of
reaction in the political, social, and ecclesiastical world, are only
too well calculated to give point to those dangers. If any one doubts
it, he has only to look over the conduct of Christian synods and of the
German Reichstag during the last few years. Quite in harmony are the
recent efforts of many secular governments to get on as good a footing
as possible with the "spiritual regiment," their deadly enemy--that
is, to submit to its yoke. The two forces find a common aim in the
suppression of free thought and free scientific research, for the
purpose of thus more easily securing a complete despotism.
Let us first emphatically protest that it is a question for us of the
necessary defence of science and reason against the vigorous attacks
of the Christian Church and its vast army, not of an unprovoked
attack of science on religion. And, in the first place, our defence
must be prepared against Romanism or Ultramontanism. This "one ark
of salvation," this Catholic Church "destined for all," is not only
much larger and more powerful than the other Christian sects, but it
has the exceptional advantage of a vast, centralized organization
and an unrivalled political ability. Men of science are often heard
to say that the Catholic superstition is no more astute than the
other forms of supernatural faith, and that all these insidious
institutions are equally inimical to reason and science. As a matter
of general theoretical principle the statement may pass, but it is
certainly wrong when we look to its practical side. The deliberate and
indiscriminate attacks of the ultramontane Church on science, supported
by the apathy and ignorance of the masses, are, on account of its
powerful organization, much more severe and dangerous than those of
other religions.
In order to appreciate correctly the extreme importance of Christianity
in regard to the entire history of civilization, and particularly
its fundamental opposition to reason and science, we must briefly
run over the principal stages of its historical evolution. It may be
divided into four periods: (1) primitive Christianity (the first three
centuries), (2) papal Christianity (twelve centuries, from the fourth
to the fifteenth), (3) the Reformation (three centuries, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth), and (4) modern pseudo-Christianity.
I.--PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY
Primitive Christianity embraces the first three centuries. Christ
himself, the noble prophet and enthusiast, so full of the love of
humanity, was far below the level of classical culture; he knew nothing
beyond the Jewish traditions; he has not left a single line of writing.
He had, indeed, no suspicion of the advanced stage to which Greek
philosophy and science had progressed five hundred years before.
All that we know of him and of his original teaching is taken from the
chief documents of the New Testament--the four gospels and the Pauline
epistles. As to the four canonical gospels, we now know that they were
selected from a host of contradictory and forged manuscripts of the
first three centuries by the three hundred and eighteen bishops who
assembled at the Council of Nicæa in 327. The entire list of gospels
numbered forty; the canonical list contains four. As the contending
and mutually abusive bishops could not agree about the choice, they
determined to leave the selection to a miracle. They put all the books
(according to the _Synodicon_ of Pappus) together underneath the
altar, and prayed that the apocryphal books, of human origin, might
remain there, and the genuine, inspired books might be miraculously
placed on the table of the Lord. And that, says tradition, really
occurred! The three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke--all
written _after_ them, not _by_ them, at the beginning of the second
century) and the very different fourth gospel (ostensibly "after"
John, written about the middle of the second century) leaped on the
table, and were thenceforth recognized as the inspired (with their
thousand mutual contradictions) foundations of Christian doctrine. If
any modern "unbeliever" finds this story of the "leap of the sacred
books" incredible, we must remind him that it is just as credible as
the table-turning and spirit-rapping that are believed to take place
to-day by millions of educated people; and that hundreds of millions of
Christians believe just as implicitly in their personal immortality,
their "resurrection from the dead," and the Trinity of God--dogmas that
contradict pure reason no more and no less than that miraculous bound
of the gospel manuscripts.
The most important sources after the gospels are the fourteen separate
(and generally forged) epistles of Paul. The genuine Pauline epistles
(_three_ in number, according to recent criticism--to the Romans,
Galatians, and Corinthians) were written before the canonical gospels,
and contain less incredible miraculous matter than they. They are
also more concerned than the gospels to adjust themselves with a
rational view of the world. Hence the advanced theology of modern times
constructs its "ideal Christianity" rather on the base of the Pauline
epistles than on the gospels, so that it has been called "Paulinism."
The remarkable personality of Paul, who possessed much more culture
and practical sense than Christ, is extremely interesting, from the
anthropological point of view, from the fact that the racial origin
of the two great religious founders is very much the same. Recent
historical investigation teaches that Paul's father was of Greek
nationality, and his mother of Jewish.[33] The half-breeds of these two
races, which are so very distant in origin (although they are branches
of the same species, the _homo mediterraneus_), are often distinguished
by a happy blending of talents and temperament, as we find in many
recent and actual instances. The plastic Oriental imagination and the
critical Western reason often admirably combine and complete each
other. That is visible in the Pauline teaching, which soon obtained a
greater influence than the earliest Christian notions. Hence it is not
incorrect to consider Paulinism a new phenomenon, of which the father
was the philosophy of the Greeks, and the mother the religion of the
Jews. Neoplatonism is an analogous combination.
As to the real teaching and aims of Christ (and as to many important
aspects of his life) the views of conflicting theologians diverge
more and more, as historical criticism (Strauss, Feuerbach, Baur,
Renan, etc.) puts the accessible facts in their true light, and draws
impartial conclusions from them. Two things, certainly, remain beyond
dispute--the lofty principle of universal charity and the fundamental
maxim of ethics, the "golden rule," that issues therefrom; both,
however, existed in theory and in practice centuries before the time
of Christ (cf. chap. xix.). For the rest, the Christians of the early
centuries were generally pure Communists, sometimes "Social Democrats,"
who, according to the prevailing theory in Germany to-day, ought to
have been exterminated with fire and sword.
II.--PAPAL CHRISTIANITY
Latin Christianity, variously called Papistry, Romanism, Vaticanism,
Ultramontanism, or the Roman Catholic Church, is one of the most
remarkable phenomena in the history of civilized man; in spite of
the storms that have swept over it, it still exerts a most powerful
influence. Of the four hundred and ten million Christians who are
scattered over the earth the majority--that is, two hundred and
twenty-five millions--are Roman Catholics; there are seventy-five
million Greek Catholics and one hundred and ten million Protestants.
During a period of one thousand two hundred years, from the fourth to
the sixteenth century, the papacy has almost absolutely controlled and
tainted the spiritual life of Europe; on the other hand, it has won but
little territory from the ancient religions of Asia and Africa. In Asia
Buddhism still counts five hundred and three million followers, the
Brahmanic religion one hundred and thirty-eight millions, and Islam one
hundred and twenty millions.
It is the despotism of the papacy that lent its darkest character to
the Middle Ages; it meant death to all freedom of mental life, decay
to all science, corruption to all morality. From the noble height to
which the life of the human mind had attained in classical antiquity,
in the centuries before Christ and the first century after Christ,
it soon sank, under the rule of the papacy, to a level which, in
respect of the knowledge of the truth, can only be termed barbarism.
It is often protested that other aspects of mental life--poetry and
architecture, scholastic learning and patristic philosophy--were richly
developed in the Middle Ages. But this activity was in the service of
the Church; it did not tend to the cultivation, but to the suppression,
of free mental research. The exclusive preparing for an unknown
eternity beyond the tomb, the contempt of nature, the withdrawal from
the study of it, which are essential elements of Christianity, were
urged as a sacred duty by the Roman hierarchy. It was not until the
beginning of the sixteenth century that a change for the better came in
with the Reformation.
It is impossible for us here to describe the pitiful retrogression
of culture and morality during the twelve centuries of the spiritual
despotism of Rome. It is very pithily expressed in a saying of the
greatest and the ablest of the Hohenzollerns; Frederick the Great
condensed his judgment in the phrase that the study of history led
one to think that from Constantine to the date of the Reformation the
whole world was insane. L. Büchner has given us an admirable, brief
description of this "period of insanity" in his work on _Religious
and Scientific Systems_. The reader who desires a closer acquaintance
with the subject would do well to consult the historical works of
Ranke, Draper, Kolb, Svoboda, etc. The truthful description of the
awful condition of the Christian Middle Ages, which is given by these
and other unprejudiced historians, is confirmed by all the reliable
sources of investigation, and by the historical monuments which
have come down from the saddest period of human history. Educated
Catholics, who are sincere truth-seekers, cannot be too frequently
recommended to study these historical sources for themselves. This is
the more necessary as ultramontane literature has still a considerable
influence. The old trick of deceiving the faithful by a complete
reversal of facts and an invention of miraculous circumstances is
still worked by it with great success. We will only mention Lourdes
and the "Holy Coat" of Trêves. The ultramontane professor of history
at Frankfurt, Johannes Janssen, affords a striking example of the
length they will go in distorting historical truth; his much-read works
(especially his _History of the German People since the Middle Ages_)
are marred by falsification to an incredible extent. The untruthfulness
of these Jesuitical productions is on a level with the credulity and
the uncritical judgment of the simple German nation that takes them for
gospel.
One of the most interesting of the historical facts which clearly prove
the evil of the ultramontane despotism is its vigorous and consistent
struggle with science. This was determined on, in principle, from the
very beginning of Christianity, inasmuch as it set faith above reason
and preached the blind subjection of the one to the other; that was
natural, seeing that our whole life on earth was held to be only a
preparation for the legendary life beyond, and thus scientific research
was robbed of any real value. The deliberate and successful attack on
science began in the early part of the fourth century, particularly
after the Council of Nicæa (327), presided over by Constantine--called
the "Great" because he raised Christianity to the position of a state
religion, and founded Constantinople, though a worthless character,
a false-hearted hypocrite, and a murderer. The success of the papacy
in its conflict with independent scientific thought and inquiry is
best seen in the distressing condition of science and its literature
during the Middle Ages. Not only were the rich literary treasures
that classical antiquity had bequeathed to the world destroyed for
the most part, or withdrawn from circulation, but the rack and the
stake insured the silence of every heretic--that is, every independent
thinker. If he did not keep his thoughts to himself, he had to look
forward to being burned alive, as was the fate of the great monistic
philosopher, Giordano Bruno, the reformer, John Huss, and more than a
hundred thousand other "witnesses to the truth." The history of science
in the Middle Ages teaches us on every page that independent thought
and empirical research were completely buried for twelve sad centuries
under the oppression of the omnipotent papacy.
All that we esteem in true Christianity, in the sense of its founder
and of his noblest followers, and that we must endeavor to save from
the inevitable wreck of this great world religion for our new monistic
religion, lies on its ethical and social planes. The principles of
true humanism, the golden rule, the spirit of tolerance, the love
of man, in the best and highest sense of the word--all these true
graces of Christianity were not, indeed, first discovered and given
to the world by that religion, but were successfully developed in the
critical period when classical antiquity was hastening to its doom.
The papacy, however, has attempted to convert all those virtues into
the direct contrary, and still to hang out the sign of the old firm.
Instead of Christian charity, it introduced a fanatical hatred of the
followers of all other religions; with fire and sword it has pursued,
not only the heathen, but every Christian sect that dared resist the
imposition of ultramontane dogma. Tribunals for heretics were erected
all over Europe, yielding unnumbered victims, whose torments seemed
only to fill their persecutors, with all their Christian charity, with
a peculiar satisfaction. The power of Rome was directed mercilessly
for centuries against everything that stood in its way. Under the
notorious Torquemada (1481-98), in Spain alone eight thousand heretics
were burned alive and ninety thousand punished with the confiscation
of their goods and the most grievous ecclesiastical fines; in the
Netherlands, under the rule of Charles V., at least fifty thousand
men fell victims to the clerical bloodthirst. And while the heavens
resounded with the cry of the martyrs, the wealth of half the world was
pouring into Rome, to which the whole of Christianity paid tribute, and
the self-styled representatives of God on earth and their accomplices
(not infrequently Atheists themselves) wallowed in pleasure and vice
of every description. "And all these privileges," said the frivolous,
syphilitic Pope, Leo X., "have been secured to us by the fable of Jesus
Christ."
Yet, with all the discipline of the Church and the fear of God, the
condition of European society was pitiable. Feudalism, serfdom, the
grace of God, and the favor of the monks ruled the land; the poor
helots were only too glad to be permitted to raise their miserable
huts under the shadow of the castle or the cloister, their secular and
spiritual oppressors and exploiters. Even to-day we suffer from the
aftermath of these awful ages and conditions, in which there was no
question of care for science or higher mental culture save in rare
circumstances and in secret. Ignorance, poverty, and superstition
combined with the immoral operation of the law of celibacy, which
had been introduced in the eleventh century, to consolidate the
ever-growing power of the papacy. It has been calculated that there
were more than ten million victims of fanatical religious hatred during
this "Golden Age" of papal domination; and how many more million human
victims must be put to the account of celibacy, oral confession, and
moral constraint, the most pernicious and accursed institutions of
the papal despotism! Unbelieving philosophers, who have collected
disproofs of the existence of God, have overlooked one of the strongest
arguments in that sense--the fact that the Roman "Vicar of Christ"
could for twelve centuries perpetrate with impunity the most shameful
and horrible deeds "in the name of God."
III.--THE REFORMATION
The history of civilization, which we are so fond of calling "the
history of the world," enters upon its third period with the
Reformation of the Christian Church, just as its second period begins
with the founding of Christianity. With the Reformation begins the
new birth of fettered reason, the reawakening of science, which the
iron hand of the Christian papacy had relentlessly crushed for twelve
hundred years. At the same time the spread of general education had
already commenced, owing to the invention of printing about the
middle of the fifteenth century; and towards its close several great
events occurred, especially the discovery of America in 1492, which
prepared the way for the "renaissance" of science in company with
that of art. Indeed, certain very important advances were made in the
knowledge of nature during the first half of the sixteenth century,
which shook the prevailing system to its very foundations. Such were
the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan in 1522, which afforded
empirical proof of its rotundity, and the founding of the new system of
the world by Copernicus in 1543.
Yet the 31st of October in the year 1517, the day on which Martin
Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the wooden door of Wittenburg
Cathedral, must be regarded as the commencement of a new epoch; for
on that day was forced the iron door of the prison in which the Papal
Church had detained fettered reason for twelve hundred years. The
merits of the great reformer have been partly exaggerated, partly
underestimated. It has been justly pointed out that Luther, like all
the other reformers, remained in manifold subjection to the deepest
superstition. Thus he was throughout life a supporter of the rigid
dogma of the verbal inspiration of the Bible; he zealously maintained
the doctrines of the resurrection, original sin, predestination,
justification by faith, etc. He rejected as folly the great discovery
of Copernicus, because in the Bible "Joshua bade the sun, not the
earth, stand still." He utterly failed to appreciate the great
political revolutions of his time, especially the profound and just
agitation of the peasantry. Worse still was the fanatical Calvin, of
Geneva, who had the talented Spanish physician, Serveto, burned alive
in 1553, because he rejected the absurd dogma of the Trinity. The
fanatical "true believers" of the reformed Church followed only too
frequently in the blood-stained footsteps of their papal enemies; as
they do even in our own day. Deeds of unparalleled cruelty followed
in the train of the Reformation--the massacre of St. Bartholomew and
the persecution of the Huguenots in France, bloody heretic-hunts in
Italy, civil war in England, and the Thirty Years War in Germany. Yet,
in spite of those grave blemishes, to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries belongs the honor of once more opening a free path to the
thoughtful mind, and delivering reason from the oppressive yoke of the
papacy. Thus only was made possible that great development of different
tendencies in critical philosophy and of new paths in science which
won for the subsequent eighteenth century the honorable title of "the
century of enlightenment."
IV.--THE PSEUDO-CHRISTIANITY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
As the fourth and last stage in the history of Christianity we oppose
our nineteenth century to all its predecessors. It is true that the
enlightenment of preceding centuries had promoted critical thought in
every direction, and the rise of science itself had furnished powerful
empirical weapons; yet it seems to us that our progress along both
lines has been quite phenomenal during the nineteenth century. It
has inaugurated an entirely new period in the history of the human
mind, characterized by the development of the monistic philosophy
of nature. At its very commencement the foundations were laid of a
new anthropology (by the comparative anatomy of Cuvier) and of a new
biology (by the _Philosophie Zoologique_ of Lamarck). The two great
French scientists were quickly succeeded by two contemporary German
scholars--Baer, the founder of the science of evolution, and Johannes
Müller, the founder of comparative morphology and physiology. A
pupil of Müller, Theodor Schwann, created the far-reaching cellular
theory in 1838, in conjunction with M. Schleiden. Lyell had already
traced the evolution of the earth to natural causes, and thus proved
the application to our planet of the mechanical cosmogony which Kant
had sketched with so much insight in 1755. Finally, Robert Mayer and
Helmholtz established the principle of energy in 1842--the second,
complementary half of the great law of substance, the first half of
which (the persistence of matter) had been previously discovered by
Lavoisier. Forty years ago Charles Darwin crowned all these profound
revelations of the intimate nature of the universe by his new theory
of evolution, the greatest natural-philosophical achievement of our
century.
What is the relation of modern Christianity to this vast and
unparalleled progress of science? In the first place, the deep gulf
between its two great branches, conservative Romanism and progressive
Protestantism, has naturally widened. The ultramontane clergy (and
we must associate with them the orthodox "evangelical alliance") had
naturally to offer a strenuous opposition to this rapid advance of
the emancipated mind; they continued unmoved in their rigid literal
belief, demanding the unconditional surrender of reason to dogma.
Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand, took refuge in a kind of
monistic pantheism, and sought a means of reconciling two contradictory
principles. It endeavored to combine the unavoidable recognition of
the established laws of nature, and the philosophic conclusions that
followed from them, with a purified form of religion, in which scarcely
anything remained of the distinctive teaching of faith. There were
many attempts at compromise to be found between the two extremes; but
the conviction rapidly spread that dogmatic Christianity had lost every
foundation, and that only its valuable ethical contents should be saved
for the new monistic religion of the twentieth century. As, however,
the existing external forms of the dominant Christian religion remained
unaltered, and as, in spite of a progressive political development,
they are more intimately than ever connected with the practical needs
of the State, there has arisen that widespread religious profession
in educated spheres which we can only call "pseudo-Christianity"--at
the bottom it is a "religious lie" of the worst character. The great
dangers which attend this conflict between sincere conviction and the
hypocritical profession of modern pseudo-Christians are admirably
described in Max Nordau's interesting work on _The Conventional Lies of
Civilization_.
In the midst of this obvious falseness of prevalent pseudo-Christianity
there is one favorable circumstance for the progress of a rational
study of nature: its most powerful and bitterest enemy, the Roman
Church, threw off its mask of ostensible concern for higher mental
development about the middle of the nineteenth century, and declared
a _guerre à l'outrance_ against independent science. This happened
in three important challenges to reason, for the explicitness and
resoluteness of which modern science and culture cannot but be
grateful to the "Vicar of Christ." (1) In December, 1854, the pope
promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary. (2) Ten
years afterwards--in December, 1864--the pope published, in his
famous _encyclica_, an absolute condemnation of the whole of modern
civilization and culture; in the _syllabus_ that accompanied it he
enumerated and anathematized all the rational theses and philosophical
principles which are regarded by modern science as lucid truths. (3)
Finally, six years afterwards--on July 13, 1870--the militant head of
the Church crowned his folly by claiming _infallibility_ for himself
and all his predecessors in the papal chair. This triumph of the Roman
_curia_ was communicated to the astonished world five days afterwards,
on the very day on which France declared war with Prussia. Two months
later the temporal power of the pope was taken from him in consequence
of the war.
These three stupendous acts of the papacy were such obvious assaults on
the reason of the nineteenth century that they gave rise, from the very
beginning, to a most heated discussion even within orthodox Catholic
circles. When the Vatican Council proceeded to define the dogma of
infallibility on July 13, 1870, only three-fourths of the bishops
declared in its favor, 451 out of 601 assenting; many other bishops,
who wished to keep clear of the perilous definition, were absent from
the council. But the shrewd pontiff had calculated better than the
timid "discreet Catholics": even this extraordinary dogma was blindly
accepted by the credulous and uneducated masses of the faithful.
The whole history of the papacy, as it is substantiated by a thousand
reliable sources and accessible documents, appears to the impartial
student as an unscrupulous tissue of lying and deceit, a reckless
pursuit of absolute mental despotism and secular power, a frivolous
contradiction of all the high moral precepts which true Christianity
enunciates--charity and toleration, truth and chastity, poverty and
self-denial. When we judge the long series of popes and of the Roman
princes of the Church, from whom the pope is chosen, by the standard of
pure Christian morality, it is clear that the great majority of them
were pitiful impostors, many of them utterly worthless and vicious.
These well-known historical facts, however, do not prevent millions
of educated Catholics from admitting the infallibility which the pope
has claimed for himself; they do not prevent Protestant princes from
going to Rome, and doing reverence to the pontiff (their most dangerous
enemy); they do not prevent the fate of the German people from being
intrusted to-day to the hands of the servants and followers of this
"pious impostor" in the Reichstag--thanks to the incredible political
indolence and credulity of the nation.
The most interesting of the three great events by which the papacy has
endeavored to maintain and strengthen its despotism in the nineteenth
century is the publication of the encyclica and the syllabus in
December, 1864. In these remarkable documents all independent action
was forbidden to reason and science, and they were commanded to submit
implicitly to faith--that is, to the decrees of the infallible pope.
The great excitement which followed this sublime piece of effrontery in
educated and independent circles was in proportion with the stupendous
contents of the encyclica. Draper has given us an excellent discussion
of its educational and political significance in his _History of the
Conflict between Science and Religion_.
The dogma of the immaculate conception seems, perhaps, to be less
audacious and significant than the encyclica and the dogma of the
infallibility of the pope. Yet not only the Roman hierarchy, but
even some of the orthodox Protestants (the Evangelical Alliance, for
instance), attach great importance to this thesis. What is known
as the "immaculate oath"--that is, the confirmation of faith by an
oath taken on the immaculate conception of Mary--is still regarded by
millions of Christians as a sacred obligation. Many believers take the
dogma in a twofold application; they think that the mother of Mary was
impregnated by the Holy Ghost as well as Mary herself. Comparative and
critical theology has recently shown that this myth has no greater
claim to originality than most of the other stories in the Christian
mythology; it has been borrowed from older religions, especially
Buddhism. Similar myths were widely circulated in India, Persia,
Asia Minor, and Greece several centuries before the birth of Christ.
Whenever a king's unwedded daughter, or some other maid of high degree,
gave birth to a child, the father was always pronounced to be a god, or
a demi-god; in the Christian case it was the Holy Ghost.
The special endowments of mind or body which often distinguished these
"children of love" above ordinary offspring were thus partly explained
by "heredity." Distinguished "sons of God" of this kind were held in
high esteem both in antiquity and during the Middle Ages, while the
moral code of modern civilization reproaches them with their want of
honorable parentage. This applies even more forcibly to "daughters of
God," though the poor maidens are just as little to blame for their
want of a father. For the rest, every one who is familiar with the
beautiful mythology of classical antiquity knows that these sons and
daughters of the Greek and Roman gods often approach nearest to the
highest ideal of humanity. Recollect the large legitimate family, and
the still more numerous illegitimate offspring, of Zeus.
To return to the particular question of the impregnation of the Virgin
Mary by the Holy Ghost, we are referred to the gospels for testimony
to the fact. The only two evangelists who speak of it, Matthew and
Luke, relate in harmony that the Jewish maiden Mary was betrothed to
the carpenter Joseph, but became pregnant without his co-operation,
and, indeed, "by the Holy Ghost." As we have already related, the
four canonical gospels which are regarded as the only genuine ones
by the Christian Church, and adopted as the foundation of faith,
were deliberately chosen from a much larger number of gospels, the
details of which contradict each other sometimes just as freely as the
assertions of the four. The fathers of the Church enumerate from forty
to fifty of these spurious or apocryphal gospels; some of them are
written both in Greek and Latin--for instance, the gospel of James, of
Thomas, of Nicodemus, and so forth. The details which these apocryphal
gospels give of the life of Christ, especially with regard to his birth
and childhood, have just as much (or, on the whole, just as little)
claim to historical validity as the four canonical gospels.
Now we find in one of these documents an historical statement,
confirmed, moreover, in the _Sepher Toldoth Jeschua_, which probably
furnishes the simple and natural solution of the "world-riddle" of the
supernatural conception and birth of Christ. The author curtly gives us
in one sentence the remarkable statement which contains this solution:
"Josephus Pandera, the Roman officer of a Calabrian legion which was in
Judæa, seduced Miriam of Bethlehem, and was the father of Jesus." Other
details given about Miriam (the Hebrew name for Mary) are far from
being to the credit of the "Queen of Heaven."
Naturally, these historical details are carefully avoided by the
official theologian, but they assort badly with the traditional myth,
and lift the veil from its mystery in a very simple and natural
fashion. That makes it the more incumbent on impartial research and
pure reason to make a critical examination of these statements. It
must be admitted that they have much more title to credence than all
the other statements about the birth of Christ. When, on familiar
principles of science, we put aside the notion of supernatural
conception through an "overshadowing of the Most High" as a pure myth,
there only remains the widely accepted version of modern rational
theology--that Joseph, the Jewish carpenter, was the true father of
Christ. But this assumption is explicitly contradicted by many texts
of the gospels; Christ himself was convinced that he was a "Son of
God," and he never recognized his foster-father, Joseph, as his real
parent. Joseph, indeed, wanted to leave his betrothed when he found her
pregnant without his interference. He gave up this idea when an angel
appeared to him in a dream and pacified him. As it is expressly stated
in the first chapter of Matthew (vv. 24, 25), there was no sexual
intercourse between Joseph and Mary until after Jesus was born.
The statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the Roman officer,
Pandera, was the true father of Christ, seems all the more credible
when we make a careful anthropological study of the personality
of Christ. He is generally regarded as purely Jewish. Yet the
characteristics which distinguish his high and noble personality,
and which give a distinct impress to his religion, are certainly not
Semitical; they are rather features of the higher Arian race, and
especially of its noblest branch, the Hellenes. Now, the name of
Christ's real father, "Pandera," points unequivocally to a Greek
origin; in one manuscript, in fact, it is written "Pandora." Pandora
was, according to the Greek mythology, the first woman, born of
the earth by Vulcan and adorned with every charm by the gods, who
was espoused by Epimetheus, and sent by Zeus to men with the dread
"Pandora-box," containing every evil, in punishment for the stealing of
divine fire from heaven by Prometheus.
And it is interesting to see the different reception that the
love-story of Miriam has met with at the hands of the four great
Christian nations of civilized Europe. The stern morality of the
Teutonic races entirely repudiates it; the righteous German and the
prudish Briton prefer to believe blindly in the impossible thesis of a
conception "by the Holy Ghost." It is well known that this strenuous
and carefully paraded prudery of the higher classes (especially in
England) is by no means reflected in the true condition of sexual
morality in high quarters. The revelations which the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, for instance, made on the subject twelve years ago vividly
recalled the condition of Babylon.
The Romantic races, which ridicule this prudery and take sexual
relations less seriously, find _Mary's Romance_ attractive enough;
the special cult which "Our Lady" enjoys in France and Italy is often
associated with this love-story with curious naïveté. Thus, for
example, Paul de Regla (Dr. Desjardin), author of _Jesus of Nazareth
considered from a Scientific, Historical, and Social Standpoint_
(1894), finds precisely in the illegitimate birth of Christ a special
"title to the halo that irradiates his noble form."
It seemed to me necessary to enter fully into this important question
of the origin of Christ in the sense of impartial historical science,
because the Church militant itself lays great emphasis on it, and
because it regards the miraculous structure which has been founded
on it as one of its strongest weapons against modern thought. The
highest ethical value of pure primitive Christianity and the ennobling
influence of this "religion of love" on the history of civilization are
quite independent of those mythical dogmas. The so-called "revelations"
on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest
results of modern science.