Christendom, Converts and Spiritual Conversion

 “Through all those centuries of clashing and changing frontiers, Christendom in terms of time and space extended itself. Its missionaries succeeded among the barbaric as they had among the cultured, and such gatherings as the Synod of Whitby, far by the North Sea and almost on the edge of the ancient Empire, repeated, to their degree, the Council of Nicaea. Both the Gospel and the Creed mastered the new world. But the method of conversion had perhaps changed somewhat. In the old days it had been individuals who had been converted, either by intellectual persuasion or spiritual violence, by grace, by intellect, or (at lowest) by fashion. But now it was whole communities which were abruptly annexed. The prestige, the power, and no doubt sometimes the piety of Christendom subdued one dynasty after another; a sudden rain of culture and Christianity descended over their territories, and the Christianity was often no more than the chief interference of the culture. The mass of the converts followed their lords into the territory of the spiritual City as into that of the temporal. Their loyalty to their chieftains no doubt contributed to that result; it was by no means a tyrannic compulsion but an almost ‘democratic’ fidelity that governed them, nor was the reception of the Faith always subservient; it must have had about it at times something of the Jew accepting European tradition. But often it was imposed after defeat, though sometimes it was accepted after victory. Either way there were what may be called mass-conversions, and therefore uninstructed conversions. This in not to say they were insincere. But the crowds of husbandmen, sailors, and warriors could hardly be taught the philosophy of the Faith before baptism, nor could the majority, in all probability, be convinced of the Augustinian situation, of their need for the Redeemer, or of the presence of the Redeemer. A certain firmness came into action on the part of the great missionaries; they tended to say, as has so often been said about other states: ‘Love will come afterwards.’ The hierarchical complex of the Faith swept down over those intruding frontiers, over the supernatural fantasies, the natural loyalties, and the universal tragedy. It belonged, inevitably, to the Christian priesthood to encourage the totality of the new religion, Martin of Tours, Cedd in Essex, Wilfrid in Northumbria. The subordinate masses were not left, as Christians under Islam were left, to work and to pay. Except (and even) in the case of the Jews, Christianity intended nothing less than an organic change. It proposed always to generate the world anew. It still deprecated violence, But its royal and lay missionaries were not so conformable. Olaf swept up through Norway and Charlemagne out over Saxony; Alfred compelled the Danes to conversion. They saw before them cannibalism and wizardry and fate, and their honest but rash minds determined to end, by one means or another, the perils of supernatural evil. There was much to be said on their behalf; it was perhaps the only action possible to them. But the method had its disadvantages.

 “In fact, it is doubtful whether Christendom has ever quite recovered from the mass-conversion of the fashionable classes inside Rome and of the barbaric races outside Rome. Those conversions prepared the way for the Church of the Middle Ages, but the forcibleness of the conversions also prepared the way for the Church of all the after ages. It is at least arguable that the Christian Church will have to return to a pre-Constantine state before she can properly recover the ground she too quickly won. Her victories, among other disadvantages, produces in her children a great tendency to be aware of evil rather than of sin, meaning by evil the wickedness done by others, by sin the wickedness done by oneself. The actuality of evil does not altogether excuse the hectic and hysterical attention paid to it; especially to benefits which the Christian spectator strongly disapproves or strongly desires. Even contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition. To grow into the vibrant web of universal and supernatural co-inherence is as difficult as to invite the direct and particular co-inherence of Almighty God. The natural mass is not the supernatural web—not even when it calls itself Christendom. . . . Christendom laboured under its converts; they seized, coloured, and almost ruined it. But they never touched the Definitions. The Gospels may have been neglected but the Creed never failed.”

 

*Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: The History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (Living Age Books:1956), pp.84-87, 87-88.