But whatever the reason, Christians lack the confidence, or assurance, to stand back from the Church’s problems, and ask what has gone wrong, and what can be done to put it right? Augustine was a good example of this. While the Empire was falling apart, he was concerned to give women advice on preserving their virginity, and lament the inevitable damnation of unbaptised infants. Bertrand Russell calls this a ferocious doctrine, and adds the comment that if this was the best one of the greatest minds at the time could do, it is hardly surprising that the subsequent age was one of the greatest cruelty.
So what part has Christianity to play in a situation in which militant Islam has made it very clear that it has declared war on the West? Or is the Church of England so spineless that it says it has no part to play? Albert Schweitzer in a lecture in 1932, on the centenary of Goethe’s death, declared that “the great religious problem which confronts Christianity” was how to combine the concept of God which originates in the contemplation, study, and measurement of Nature, with the Biblical concept of a God who acts through history, without ruining the latter. Expressing it in slightly more modern language, religion has to reconcile the traditional approach with the truth of science, particularly the truth of Evolution, or risk finding that science remains in the ascendant and traditional religion is relegated to irrelevance. So let us consider how people have thought how God acted through History.
Let us begin with the prophets. It has to be admitted that the prophets were rather a bloodthirsty lot. Amos is a good example, with his chorus of “For three transgressions.. and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof…”, A.V. Ch.1,v.3,6,9. I applaud his cry for judgement to run down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream; except that “judgement” in the Old Testament meant I think execution, rather than a reasoned discourse by a dispassionate Judge. But the chaos that he was prepared to envisage as the prelude to justice upon earth, reminds one of Ghengis Khan, rather than Jesus. And though Hosea seems to have been more troubled by social wrongs than international ones, even he says God promises to pour out his wrath on the Princes of Judah like water, and “The sword shall be swung over their blood-spattered altars and put an end to their prattling priests”, NEB, Ch.11,v.6. Isaiah too, “Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand…Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate”, A.V. Ch.13,v.6&9. And again Jeremiah, “Behold a people cometh from the north country, and a great nation shall be raised from the sides of the earth. They shall lay hold on bow and spear; they are cruel, and have no mercy.. and they ride upon horses set in array like men for war against thee, O daughter of Zion”, A.V. Ch.6,v.22. And Ezekiel, “A third part of thee (Jerusalem) shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them”, A.V. Ch.5,v.12.