Very interesting article in History Today by Tom Holland:
Midway through the eighth century a monk living in the monastery of Beth Hale in Iraq recorded the arrival there of an eminent visitor. A ‘Son of Ishmael’ – one of the Arab dignitaries who served at the court of the caliph – had fallen ill. Naturally enough, since Christian holy men were renowned for effecting miracle cures, he had turned to the monks to help him with his convalescence. The Arab stayed ten days in the monastery and in that time he and his hosts argued freely about their respective religions. The monk, of course, portrayed himself as emphatically the winner. Nevertheless it is clear that the Arab had managed to land the odd blow. ‘Is not our faith better than any faith that is on the earth?’ he had demanded to know. ‘And is this not the sign that God loves us and is pleased with our faith – namely, that he has given us dominion over all religions and all peoples?’
The terms of this argument, it is true, were hardly original to Islam. Back in the early fourth century Eusebius, a Palestinian bishop, had written a biography of Constantine (r. 306-37), the emperor who had stunned the Roman world by converting to Christianity. God had blessed him for bowing his head before Christ with any number of rewards. Eusebius, who combined the talents of a polemicist with a profound streak of hero-worship, had sheltered no doubts on that score: ‘So dear was Constantine to God, and so blessed, so pious and so fortunate in all he undertook that with the greatest facility he obtained authority over more nations than any who had preceded him – and yet retained his power, undisturbed, to the very close of his life.’
This core equation – that worldly greatness was bestowed by God upon those who pleased Him – was one that reached back to the origins of human belief in the supernatural. Rarely had a society existed that did not see itself as somehow blessed by divine approval. Empires had invariably cast themselves as the favourites of the gods. So it was, some 300 years before Constantine, that Virgil had defined the Romans as a people entrusted by the heavens with a sacred charge: to spare the vanquished and to overthrow the haughty. A potent sentiment and an enduring one. Muslims as well as Christians had proven to be its heirs. The Qu’ran, composed though it was on the margins of the Roman world during the seventh century, bore witness to a conception of imperial mission that was not so different from the pretensions of Virgil’s day: ‘When you encounter the unbelievers, blows to necks it shall be until, once you have routed them, you are to tighten their fetters.’ So Muhammad, serving as the mouthpiece of God, had informed his followers. ‘Thereafter, it is either gracious bestowal of freedom or holding them to ransom, until war has laid down its burdens.’
Yet by the time of Muhammad (570-632) much had changed from the heyday of the pagan empire and to seismic effect. The revolutionary notion that the universe was governed by a single, all-powerful god had decisively transformed people’s understanding of what the sanction of the heavens might mean. Just as Constantine had discovered in Christ an infinitely more potent patron than Apollo or Sol Invictus had ever been, so those who turned to the pages of the Qu’ran found revealed there a celestial monarch of such limitless and terrifying power that there could certainly be no question of portraying Him – as the Christians did with their god – in human form. Nothing, literally nothing, was beyond Him. ‘If He wishes, O mankind, He can make you disappear and bring others in your stead.’ To a deity capable of such a prodigious feat of annihilation what was the overthrow of an empire or two? Remarkable though it was that the previously despised and marginal Arabs had managed to trample down both Roman and Persian power, no explanation was needed for this, so Muslims came to believe, that did not derive from an even more awesome and heart-stopping miracle: the revelation to the Prophet of the Qu’ran. What surprise that a fire lit far beyond the reach of the ancient superpowers should have spread to illuminate the entire world when that fire was the Word of God?
So it was, across a vast sweep of Eurasia, stretching from the Atlantic coast to the frontiers of China, that a distinctive understanding of history came to be taken for granted. Whether in Christendom or in the House of Islam, the past was understood as the tracing of patterns upon the centuries by the forefinger of God. The divine had intruded into the sweep of earthly events and everything had changed as a result. The very fabric of time had been rent. Quite how a deity who transcended eternity and space might actually have descended from heaven to earth was, of course, a tricky problem for Christians and Muslims alike to solve and it took bitter and occasionally murderous argument to arrive at anything like a consensus. . .
Continue reading. It’s an interesting article. It has always struck me that religious arguments lead so often to vicious struggles is because there is no deciding authority to which contending parties can appeal: each side is discussing their beliefs, whose truth is determined by faith and faith, as well all know, differs enormously from person to person and from religion to religion. In scientific matters, OTOH, the contending parties can resolve their differences with an experiment: shape an experience so that the answer is provided by what we commonly refer to as reality. In mathematical matters, the contending parties can verify that the proof follows the laws of logic. But in matters of religious belief, the only authority is power, as the Vatican has just demonstrated to US nuns.