Christians believe in progress. For good reason. They believe in things getting better because they believe in God, Who is the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of all things. In other words, the Christian view of progress is decidedly non-secular.
Redemptive history reveals at the earliest beginnings that without God, human history becomes a maelstrom of self-destructive evil. The covenant God subsequently made with Noah assures us that never again would He permit evil to become universally regnant upon the earth. Progress becomes at least possible in a world where evil is constantly being restrained from its worst excesses.
Secondly, the Bible declares God's providential control and sustenance of His creation. He loves what He has made, and hates the despoilation wrought by wickedness. He feeds the animals and cares for them. He sets boundaries for the sea. He brings the life-giving sequence of the seasons.
Thirdly, He has settled the reign over all things upon His Son, Who has come into human history to cast out the Devil and destroy all his works. This gives a certain assurance of historical progress.
In the end, the entirety of creation will be released from the burden that sin has placed upon it. There is absolutely no doubt that this is happening and will continue happen. It is as certain and rock-solid as God Himself and His oaths and covenant. The only doubts about this come from our sinful impatience. Things are not improving as fast as we would like--therefore, maybe, progress is chimerical, or so we are tempted to think from time to time.
The ancient world had no belief in progress. It was a distinctly Christian doctrine. This, from
. . . the power of the progress idea stems in part from the fact that it derives from a fundamental Christian doctrine—the idea of providence, of redemption. Gray notes in The Silence of Animals that no other civilization conceived any such phenomenon as the end of time, a concept given to the world by Jesus and St. Paul. Classical thinking, as well as the thinking of the ancient Egyptians and later of Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shintoism and early Judaism, saw humanity as reflecting the rest of the natural world—essentially unchanging but subject to cycles of improvement and deterioration, rather like the seasons. “By creating the expectation of a radical alteration in human affairs,” writes Gray, “Christianity . . . founded the modern world.”The modern world secularized this doctrine of progress, stripping out all its Christian underpinnings. The engine of progress was to be Man, freed from the constraints of religious myths and superstitions, cool, calm, calculating--above all, rational. The humanist utopia beckoned. Many in the nineteenth century believed fervently that it was almost upon them. But now only fools and horses now still cling to the idea of secular progress. A rising living standard and material progress does not a utopia make.
The apostles of secular humanism assured us all that progress included human nature. By reason we would all be redeemed and human nature would be perfected. We would evolve to a new order.
The noted British historian J. B. Bury (1861–1927) captured the power of this intellectual development when he wrote, “This doctrine of the possibility of indefinitely moulding the characters of men by laws and institutions . . . laid a foundation on which the theory of the perfectibility of humanity could be raised. It marked, therefore, an important stage in the development of the doctrine of Progress.”To which we respond with a Chestertonian belly laugh.
We must pause here over this doctrine of progress. It may be the most powerful idea ever conceived in Western thought—emphasizing Western thought because the idea has had little resonance in other cultures or civilizations. It is the thesis that mankind has advanced slowly but inexorably over the centuries from a state of cultural backwardness, blindness and folly to ever more elevated stages of enlightenment and civilization—and that this human progression will continue indefinitely into the future. “No single idea,” wrote the American intellectual Robert Nisbet in 1980, “has been more important than, perhaps as important as, the idea of progress in Western civilization.” The U.S. historian Charles A. Beard once wrote that the emergence of the progress idea constituted “a discovery as important as the human mind has ever made, with implications for mankind that almost transcend imagination.” And Bury, who wrote a book on the subject, called it “the great transforming conception, which enables history to define her scope.”
The Christian view of history to this point has the course of the world fundamentally changing with the resurrection and ascension and session of our Lord Jesus Christ. From that time onwards all would belong to Him and would answer to Him. Under His aegis the West saw the emergence of the first Christendom. It has broken down now, riven with apostasy and defalcation. Thus, we see illustrated that the Christian doctrine of progress, whilst believing in its ultimate inevitability, does not make it automatic. Human progress depends upon fidelity to Christ and faithfulness to His covenant. When men come to see themselves as smarter, not just than the average bear, but of Christ Himself, consequences follow. Judicial consequences. We begin to taste the bitter fruits of the curses of the divine covenants, which are as certain and sure as their blessings.
So passes the West today. Its ideologies have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of human souls; it literally tears apart the bodies of its own children; unable now to replace its dying populations; it has become its own Black Death--a plague spread not by literal rats, but by ideological rodents of its own making.
What will take the curse from us? Or, more accurately, who will remove it? There is only One given amongst men to do this thing. Only the Lord Himself can remove this curse we have brought upon ourselves. It is to Him that the West must turn, in humility and repentance and simple child-like belief. His invitation and command remains true: "come unto me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)
May the Lord have mercy upon us all.
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