The Indispensable Man

The movers of history: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Muhammad, Martin Luther, Napoleon. All of them were great men and shaped the course of history, yet none of these men were indispensable. Even if all of them had never been born the world would be the same as it is today. There is only one Man who we cannot conceive the world without; there is only one indispensable man, the God who became man: Jesus Christ.

Consider Alexander the Great. He was a great general and conquered most of the known world of his day. He is in part responsible for the spread of Greek culture (Hellenization) that influenced (and continues to influence to this day) the West. However the spread of Greek culture was more the result of the conquest of Greece than the conquests of Greece. After Rome conquered Greece it absorbed Greek culture and spread this culture through its empire. One can imagine the spread of Greek culture even without the conquests of Alexander, the great Greek conqueror. Alexander was not an indispensable man. One can imagine a world identical to ours in which Alexander had never been born.

Or consider Julius Caesar. He symbolized the end of the Republic and the emergence of Empire. The Roman Empire influenced the world far and wide and its laws, architecture, and art continue to influence us to this day. But one can easily imagine a Roman Empire without Caesar. The Republic was dead long before the birth of Caesar. The people were not vigilant in guarding their liberty. Rome was falling into chaos and the people wanted an authoritarian to restore order. As Hegel wrote, “The great man of his age is the one who can put into words the will of his age.” If Caesar had not been born, Cassius, Brutus, Pompeii, Marc Antony—one of the number of Rome’s ambitious and skilled generals would have stepped into his role as first emperor. The world would be exactly as it is today had Caesar never been born.

What of a modern man like Napoleon? Like Alexander and Caesar Napoleon was an ambitious, yet gifted military leader who shook the foundations of the world in which he lived. But like Alexander and Caesar Napoleon was more of a symbol, more of an embodiment of the will of the people, than he was a real man. In destroying their monarch the French had destroyed their order. They looked for a strong man to restore order and protect their revolution (through expansion) from the monarchs of Europe. If Napoleon hadn’t stepped up to take on this mantle, another would have. History would have progressed no differently had Napoleon never been born.

But what of religious leaders? Muhammad founded a new religion, but this was only a Christian heresy (a simplification of the nuances of Christianity. In Islam there is no trinity, God is one. There is no salvation by faith; salvation comes through the observance of five simple pillars). This new religion was born out of its culture. It legitimized the ingrained poor treatment of woman and encouraged the constant nomadic, military advances into the West (the Huns, Avars, and Mongols) to continue uninterrupted under the mantle of Islam (by the Arabs and Turks). Islam did not change world history; it simply gave a new name to long established customs.

Or consider Martin Luther, the first modern man as he is often called. Like Napoleon he was the symbol of a revolution. Desire to reform permeated the church. Men like Wycliffe and Hus had tried before Luther and failed. If Luther had failed, another would have followed him and succeeded. He was important to human history, but not indispensable.

What of those unnamed movers of history? The inventor of writing or the first maker of the wheel? In both cases there was no single man. Writing was invented simultaneously across the globe in a number of places, as was the wheel. As great as these men were, if one hadn’t have lived, another would have stepped in his place and history would have progressed no differently. There is only one Indispensable Man. Only one Man without whose presence we cannot even begin to fathom the course that history would have taken. That man in Jesus Christ.

Scholars of all stripes and from all ages are in complete unity in this judgment: the history of the West is inconceivable without the church. One cannot imagine our history without this institution. It is impossible to reckon on how things would have progressed and how life would be now if there had never been a church. Given the tremendous effect the church has had on the West, how it has shaped it in such a way that we cannot conceive of the West without it, it is fair to say (given the influence of the West on the world) that one cannot even begin to imagine how the world would be had their never been a Christian church.

Christ is the founder of the church and one can think of no other source for this institution. Christ was not a symbol of the desires of His time; on the contrary He was executed by His own people for refusing to fill a role they wanted Him to fill (political leader). In this way He stands in stark contrast to men like Napoleon and Luther who filled a role that society had already created.

Of course there have been other founders of religion, but all other religions simply deny or affirm our natural instincts. Stoics and Platonists simply tell us to deny our natural passions (your body is cage, death is release and not to be feared, and sex in all forms is ignoble), while Hinduism and most polytheistic cults tell us to affirm them (drink in the temple of Bacchus, sleep with the priestess of Aphrodite, and appease the gods so you can delay death).

Christ tells us something new about the human condition. He tells us the body is not evil in itself (for He Himself occupied one), but our passions must be controlled. Sex is to be monogamous, but marriage is a blessing and not to be disparaged. He is the only man who was not wholly man and thereby the only man able to provide outside insight into the condition of man.

How would the West have developed after the fall of Rome without the church? If there had been no monks, who would have saved the ancient philosophies and dramas and literacy itself? The height of Greek thought never produced a notion of equality (Aristotle had his natural slavery and Plato his notion of noble and base metals). The idea of equality never entered the mind of man naturally; it was implemented by the church. How can one imagine the West without a notion of equality? There would be no Magna Carta or American or French Revolutions. Christianity fostered and encouraged the arts and sciences. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Copernicus, Galileo, and Gutenberg: all of these men were spurned by their belief in Absolute Truth and Beauty to seek to understand truth and create beauty on earth. And Christianity provided a culture with morals. Would Europe have survived if the degenerate morality and nihilism of the Roman Empire had been allowed to develop without interruption? There surely would never have been an era of chivalry and there certainly would still be slavery. The world is as it is because of the church and the church was born out of Christ. If we were to visit a world where Christ had never come, it would not be even remotely recognizable to the world we inhabit today.

That the institution of the Church is Divine (and that Christ Himself was Divine) is shown in the fact that Christ is the only indispensable man in all of human history. One can imagine human history without any of the countless great men who have graced the pages of human history, but one cannot imagine human history without the God/Man Jesus Christ.