IS THE CHURCH TOO WESTERN?
by Christopher Dawson
If nationalism--whether in the East or the West--denies the right of
the Church to exist as a universal autonomous spiritual society, it is a
challenge to the law of God and the kingship of Christ. But this does not
mean that the Church is essentially Western. On the contrary, the same
principle that forbids us to make the Church a national organization also
prevents us from identifying it with a particular civilization. The
mission of the Church is essentially universal and it is common to all
nations and races--to those of the East equally with those of the West.
We must however distinguish between this ideal universality and the
practical limitations imposed by history on the circumstances of the
Church's apostolate. By the nature of the case, the missionary is in some
sense a stranger to the nation and the culture that he evangelizes. He
comes from outside bringing a new doctrine and initiating men into a new
society. But however supernatural is his mission, he is a human being who
has been born and educated in some particular society and brings his own
cultural traditions with him, and hencein some degree his native habits
and prejudices. In this sense it is true the missionary tends to be too
Western, so that it is his duty to divest himself of his natural
prejudices and become assimilated to an alien environment and culture. As
he must translate the Christian Gospel into a new language and speak with
strange tongues, so too he mst learn to think in terms of an alien culture
and accept its social standards and values.
Yet this is not the real point at issue. For when men talk, as they
do today, about the Church's being too Western they are not thinking of
this inevitable but accidental dependence of the missionary on his
particular cultural background; they mean rather that the Church herself
has become occidentalized: that her philosophy and theology, her liturgy
and devotion have been so deeply influenced by fifteen hundred years of
association with Western culture that she has become estranged from the
Oriental world and no longer speaks to it in terms that the peoples of
Asia can understand.
Before we consider what grounds there are for such an assertion it is
necessary to determine what we mean by the word "Western." On the one hand
there is our modern Western civilization, which has spread so rapidly
through the world during the last century. This civilization is
indubitably Western, since it owes its distinctive features to the
revolutionary changes which originated in Northwestern Europe and North
America during the last two centuries. On the other hand there is the
ancient tradition of the Catholic Church, which may also be described as
Western, in so far as it is the tradition of the Western Church and looks
to Rome, the ancient metropolis of the West, as its center and head.
Nevertheless it is also a universal tradition, since it first arose a the
point where East and West met and it derived its inheritance from them
both. And if we look at the Catholic tradition in detail we shall see how
this duality runs through all the different aspects of its life.
The Church itself, though it bears a Greek name, Ecclesia, derived
from the Greek civic assembly, and is ordered by the Roman spirit of
authority and law, is the successor and heir of an Oriental people, set
apart from all the peoples of the earth to be the bearer of a divine
mission.
Similarly the mind of the Church, as expressed in the authoritative
tradition of the teaching of the Fathers, is neither Eastern nor Western
but universal. It is expressed in Western languages--in Greek and
Latin--but it was in Africa and Asia rather than in Europe that it
received its classical formulation. Greek theology was developed at
Alexandria and Antioch and in Cappadocia, while Latin theology owes its
terminology and its distinctive character to the African
Fathers--Tertullian, Cryprian, and above all St. Augustine.
While these men wrote in Latin, it was not the Latin of the Romans;
it was a new form of Christian Latin whichwas developed, mainly in Tunisia
under strong Oriental influence.
And the same is true of the new Christian Latin poetry and of the
Latin liturgy itself. No doubt the Roman rite which has outlived and
absorbed the other Latin rites bears an indelible mark of the Roman spirit
in its simplicity, its severity and its concision. But this does not mean
that it is only adapted to the worship of modern Western man, or that its
spirit is alien from that of the East. On the contrary it gives it a
classical, universal and supertemporal character which is accentuated by
its music, which is so remote from the modern West. For what has the Mass
to do with Western culture? It is the eternal offering of an eternal
priesthood--"without father, without mother, without genealogy, having
neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but like the Son of God,
continuing a priest for ever" (Heb. 7:3)
It is impossible for us to understand the Church if we regard her as
subject to the limitations of human culture. For she is essentially a
supernatural organism which transcends human cultures and transforms them
to her own ends. As Newman insisted, the Church is not a creed or a
philosophy but an imperial power, a "counter kingdom" which occupies
ground and claims to rule over those whom this world's governments had
once ruled without rival. But if the Church is an objective social
reality she is not bound to conform herself to cultural divisions. She
can take whatever forms and institutions she needs from any culture and
organizes them into a new unity which is the external expression of her
spirit and the organ of her mission to the world. If this is the case,
the question we have to ask is not whether the particular elements of this
unity are derived from East or West -- but whether they are fit
instruments of the Church's supernatural purpose. If so, they are entirely
transcend the sphere of political nationalism and national culture.
Let us take the case of typical Catholic institution--a religious
order for example; here the original institution of Christian monasticism
was of purely Oriental origin and came into existence in the Egyptian
desert in the fourth century. Almost immediately, however, the Church
accepted this new way of life as an essential expression of the Christian
spirit and spread it East and West from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and
the Persian Gulf. And as it grew it adapted itself to the life of the
different peoples amongst whom it came, though it remained fully conscious
of its origins and of the continuity of its tradition.
It was, however in the West that this development of monasticism
produced the most remarkable fruits. It was here, in the course of the
Middle Ages, that there arose the idea of the religious Order as a
specialized organ of the Church, dedicated to the performance of some
particular spiritual task-- preaching or study or the care of the poor and
the sick, or the redemption of captives. Since these Orders are
specialized some of them are moreadapted to one culture than to another,
and it may well be that an Order that has been founded to fulfill some
special task in medieval Italy or modern America is "too Western" for
*India or China. But this is not necessarily* the case. The essential
principle of the Western religious Order has become part of the common
tradition of the Church and is capable of being applied to the special
circumstances of the East, no less than the West.
There is therefore no need to undo the work of the Christian past and
to attempt to create a new type of oriental monasticism modeled on Hindu
or Buddhist patterns, for East and West a;ready coexist on the tradition
of Christian monasticism, and the same tradition can bear new fruits
wherever it is planted: The vital point is not the nationality or the
cultural background of the founders but the timeless ideals of prayer and
contemplation and the universal spirit of the apostolate for which they
are founded.
This I think is the secret if the whole matter. The Church as a
divine society possess an internal principle of life which is capable of
assimilating the most diverse materials and imprinting her own image upon
them. Inevitably in the course of history there are times when this
spiritual energy is temporarily weakened or obscured, and then the Church
tends to be judged as a human organization and identified with the faults
and limitations of its members. But always the time comes when she renews
her strength and once more puts forth her inherent divine energy in the
conversion of new peoples and the transformation of old cultures. At no
time can we expect this work to be unopposed, for the very fact that the
Church represents something entirely different--the intervention of a
supernatural principle and the coming of a divine kingdom--must inevitably
arouse the fierce apposition of all those human societies and powers which
claim absolute power over man and refuse to admit a superior or rival.
One of the strongest and most aggressive of these forces in the modern
world is nationalism, and here Christians cannot expect to avoid a
conflict. But the conflict is not really one between East and West: it is
the old conflict between the spiritual and temporal powers, which was
formerly confined largely, to the Western world and has now emerged as a
burning question in the East, largely owing to the introduction of the
political ideologies of the West into Asia and Africa. But East or West,
it is basically the same conflict, and alike in East and West the Church
stands neither for East or West but for the universal spiritual society
which is destined to embrace them both: "And the nation as shall walk in
the light of it: and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and
honor into it" (Apoc. 22:24)
From "The World Crisis and The Catholic," 1958.
Taken from the Summer 1993 issue of "The Dawson Newsletter." For
subscriptions send $8.00 to "The Dawson Newsletter", P.O. Box
332, Fayetteville, AR 72702, John J. Mulloy, Editor.