OSCA
TOM HOLLAND TO YUVAL HARARI
BELOW LEFT : A ROMAN COIN DATING FROM THE ERA OF EMPEROR TIBERIUS
BRINGING THE CHURCH BACK TO ITS ROOTS IN JESUS CHRIST
In May last year I referred to Dominion : The Making of the Western Mind by the English historian Tom Holland . Holland provides many examples of the way in which humble Christian service can morph into traditions that over time become corrupted into superstition . Yet despite this , again and again someone emerges to bring the church back to its roots in Jesus Christ .
In 2018 the Centre for Public Christianity ( CPX ) released a movie , For the Love of God : How the Church is Better and Worse Than You Ever Imagined . This project also considers the impact of Christianity on the world , both good and bad . The movie combines on-location filming and interviews with experts , including Marilynne Robinson , Rowan Williams , Alister McGrath and Miroslav Volf . Many of these interviews
are available as short clips on the CPX website . They provide a sense of
Christianity ’ s chequered history . Earlier this year I attended the launch of a new book , Bullies and Saints . As the title suggests , John Dickson , historian and founding director of CPX , makes the same point about Christianity ’ s chequered past . For instance , Dickson writes that as early as 380 AD , Gregory of Nyassa in Cappadocia , preached against slavery on the grounds that all people were in the image of God .
What a tragedy that it took a further 1400 years for that message to reach into the seats of power . In my recent quarantine ( on return from NSW ) I set myself the goal of reading all of N T Wright ’ s long book , The Resurrection of the Son of God . It was a gift from the Christian Ed staff when I retired in 2013 ! I read 74 pages a day for 10 days . What a treat ! How little did I know . It is Tom Wright ’ s contention that only the Easter event is a sufficient basis for the existence of the Christian Church .
At my suggestion a friend recently read Dominion . In response he challenged me to read the secular perspective of Yuval Noah Harari , who has written Sapiens ( 2014 ) Homo Deus ( 2016 ) and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ( 2018 ). I watched a TED talk by Harari in which he makes clear that he sees faith as a ‘ fiction ’. This is a term he applies to many other things , including corporations , nations , and specifically also to money . These ‘ fictions ’ are social constructs which enable unprecedented human cooperation and development .
In the introduction to 21 Lessons , Harari , while critical of ‘ the liberal world view and the democratic system ’, nevertheless concedes it to be ‘ the most successful and versatile political model humans have so far developed ’. This sounds a lot like Harari conceding that the ‘ Western Mind ’, with its liberal values and democratic perspectives provides the best world view currently available . If Holland is correct , this can be traced indelibly to the person of Jesus Christ .
In the same vein , Christian apologist Rebecca McLaughlin notes that Harari , with respect to human rights , concedes in Sapiens : ‘ Without recourse to eternal souls and a Creator God , it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to explain what is so special about individual Sapiens ’. In fact Harari concludes : ‘ As far as we can tell , from a purely scientific viewpoint , human life has absolutely no meaning . Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose ’.
If Tom Holland ’ s two millennia sweep of history seems large , Harari ’ s is immense . The New Yorker reports Sapiens is to become a multi-season TV drama covering 60,000 years . Any ‘ history ’ stretching from the distant past into the teleos is by nature a ‘ world view ’ and so becomes both philosophical and theological . Embracing this , Homo Deus is subtitled A brief history of tomorrow .
The tomorrow Harari anticipates is shaped by the impact of artificial intelligence , bioengineering , unprecedented data and global warming . Harari envisages small elites emerging ; human gods .
Is this an echo of Friedrich Nietzsche ’ s Ubermensch , or even the deification of emperors ? The emperor Tiberius , under whose reign Jesus was executed , had coins minted with the Latin inscription : TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AVGVSTVS ( Tiberius Caesar , Son of the Divine Augustus ).
‘ Well ’, said Jesus , ‘ Render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar , and to God what belongs to God .’ ( Mark 12 and parallels ). So is a god just a convenient fiction ? Should any one god be privileged as ‘ God ’? As a secular and atheist Jew , Harari is committed to the premise that everything comes from nothing . I can ’ t believe that . I don ’ t have that kind of faith . I put my trust in that crucified other Jew .
GRAHAM BRADBEER – OSCA CHAPLAIN
70 Great Scot Issue 163 – September 2021