The Biblical Structure of History: Chapter 13, Civilization
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen (Matthew 6:9–13).
Part 3 of the biblical covenant model is ethics
Part 3 of biblical social theory is law.
Part 3 of Christian historiography is civilization. A civilization is the result of the covenantal foundations of a religion. In the nineteenth century, humanistic historians searched for laws governing specific civilizations. They hoped to discover such laws by a careful study of historical facts. Through empiricism—attention to documents—they hoped to discover fixed laws of development. The desire to find fixed laws is the Parmenides impulse. In the twentieth century, most humanist historians decided that there are no laws of historical development. This is the Heraclitus impulse.
The biblical answer to both camps of humanists is that there are universal laws governing historical progress. They are ethical. They are found in the Bible. Adherence to these laws brings progress. Disobedience brings either setbacks or wealth that covenant-keepers will eventually inherit in history.
A Christian historian should recognize that a civilization is the product of a specific ethical system and God’s sanctions, positive and negative, enforcing this system. According to Arnold Toynbee, who wrote a ten-volume history (1934–54) of 21 civilizations, there have been five surviving civilizations since approximately the year 775: Western civilization, Byzantine civilization, Islamic civilization, Indian civilization, and Asian civilization. Geographically, they have remained fairly constant.
What we call the Lord’s prayer is covenantal. It has five points.
Point 1: “Our father.” This identifies God as personal He is the father of mankind. Mankind is also personal.
Point 2: “which art in heaven.” God reigns from on high. In the cosmic hierarchy, He is supreme.
Point 3: “hallowed be thy name.” A hallowed item or space is set apart for holy use. It is sacred. God’s name is sacred. It must not be violated. The third commandment declares: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain” (Exodus 20:7).
Point 3: “thy kingdom come.” This identifies civilization as an aspect of point 3.
Point 3: “thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” God’s will is our ethical standard. It is perfect in heaven, where there is no sin. That is to say, it is definitive in heaven. In history, where there is sin, His will is supposed to be progressively revealed to and implemented by covenant-keepers as history moves forward.
Point 4: “Give us this day our daily bread.” This is a positive sanction.
Point 4: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” This is a positive sanction.
Point 4: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” This is a positive sanction.
Now things get controversial. The final section of the prayer is not found in Luke’s version (Luke 11:6). It is not found in the most ancient manuscripts of Matthew. It is found in what is known as the textus receptus.
Point 5: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.” This has to do with the future. God’s kingdom, power, and glory are permanent.
Western history began in the mid-eighth century B.C. In Greece, this was marked by the first Olympiad in 776 B.C. In Rome, it was the founding of the city, which Roman historians believed took place in 753 B.C. Israel’s civilization began with the exodus, which took place around 1492 B.C., according to internal evidence of the Bible, and one outside anchor date: the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 B.C.. The first reference to the origin of the West came late in the ministry of Isaiah, probably around 730 B.C. He prophesied the coming of a Medo-Persian king, Cyrus, which occurred two centuries later. This is the most specific prophecy in the Bible or any other ancient document. It is so specific that critics of the Bible say that the document must have been written by a second author who added the text to the original. He did this after Cyrus allowed the Israelites to return to Israel.
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron: And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel. For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me. I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things (Isaiah 45:1–7).
This passage combines a highly specific prophecy with a declaration of God’s sovereignty. He governs the world in terms of His ethical system—righteousness: “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the Lord have created it” (v. 8). These are laws governing history.
The Persian invasion of Greece in 490 B.C. unified Greek civilization. Before this, Greece had been hundreds of independent city-states. From 490 B.C. until its defeat by Sparta in 404 B.C., Athens was dominant militarily and culturally. When we read about “Greek culture,” we are being misled. There was Athenian culture for a little over a century and a half. It left cultural artifacts. After 404 B.C., there were Plato’s records of Socrates’ debates, and there were Aristotle’s many works. He rejected everything Platonic. The other cities left mostly pottery in graves.
Macedon conquered Greece in the mid-third century. Then Alexander’s brief empire disintegrated into four in 323 B.C. Rome conquered them in the mid-second century. This had been prophesied three times by Daniel. This would have been after 586 but before the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persians in 539 B.C. To Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel revealed the rise and fall of four kingdoms. The four were in the form of an idol: gold, silver, brass, and iron (Daniel 2:31–35). There will be a fifth kingdom. “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure” (vv. 44–45).
To Belshazzar, Daniel described the four kingdoms as beasts, not an idol: lion, bear, leopard, and a beast with iron teeth, which will destroy the leopard. The leopard had four wings and four heads (Daniel 7:4–7). A fifth kingdom will replace the fourth. “As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time. I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (vv. 12–14). “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him” (v. 27).
In a third vision, also explained to Belshazar, Daniel described a ram with two horns. “Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great” (Daniel 8:2–4). Daniel named the ram. “The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia” (v. 20). The ram was destroyed by a goat (v. 7). Daniel named the goat. “And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king” (v. 21). The goat’s single horn was broken into four (v. 8). “Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power” (v. 22). These four kingdoms will be destroyed by a fourth. “And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people” (vv. 23–24). This was clearly Rome. Rome will be destroyed by the prince of princes. “And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (v. 25).
Here, we have the story of the rise and fall of Greece and Rome. This will be followed by a new kingdom, one that will rule forever. Daniel’s prophecies reveal that Christendom is the focus of God’s concern. It is the final kingdom.
Western civilization is the product of two historical cultures: Israelite culture and classical culture. Classical culture is a combination of Greek and Roman culture. The battle over historiography is this: which of these three traditions was most dominant in the development of Christendom after Constantine gained full control in A.D. 324, and after the Council of Nicaea in 325?
A Christian historian should acknowledge the crucial historical incident in the development of Western civilization. It is not discussed in any textbook. Paul had planned to take the gospel to Asia, but he was dissuaded. “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:6–10). Paul’s change of plans changed the geographical history of Christendom. It directed most of Christianity westward.
The history of Western civilization as a separate academic discipline was developed in the Renaissance. Renaissance humanists resisted the idea that Christianity had built Western civilization. They self-consciously went back to the writings, the sculpture, and the mythology of Greece and Rome in a quest for an alternative explanation of the development of Western civilization. There had been Platonic influences in the development of Christian theology and practice in the first six centuries. Platonism favored mysticism at the expense of dominion. Also, the discovery of Aristotle’s writings by Islamic scholars in the eleventh century led to the export of Aristotle’s writings to the West through Spain. But Aristotle had little influence in classical Greece. Roman law was highly influential in the development of the Christian Roman Empire. But these classical influences affected mostly literate leaders. The common people had little contact with the remnants of classical culture. The priests told the stories of ancient Israel to the early church. These stories and the priests’ explanations of God’s laws shaped the thinking of the masses. The masses were not students of Greece and Rome. Renaissance humanists ignored this obvious fact.
The humanists revived Greek and Roman learning, which was hostile to the gospel. They attempted to fuse classical knowledge, classical literature, and classical sculpture with Christianity. This was a self-conscious attempt to undermine Christendom. This tradition of explaining the development of the West in terms of Greece and Rome rather than the Old Testament, the New Testament, the monasteries, and canon law was extended by the Enlightenment after 1660. The war against Christendom was self-conscious on the part of the humanists. They rewrote history in order to conform to their concept of a humanist culture that was based more on Greek and Roman learning than on the Bible. The humanists explained human progress, not in terms of the Bible and the teachings of the church regarding the Bible, but by humanist philosophy and literature from the classical world. To this, they added scientific knowledge that seemed to be independent of biblical revelation.
It should be the task of every Christian historian to revise the humanists’ interpretation of the development of Western civilization. Christian historians need to go back to the original sources and examine the relevance of Greek and Roman thought in shaping Christian thought and culture. They should ask this question: “Were the Greek and Roman imports fundamental to the development of the West, or could biblical revelation and exposition based on this revelation have produced greater progress?” Next, they should ask this: “Specifically, would biblical ethics have been a better guide to human action than Greek philosophy? If the West’s leaders had been disciples of Christ instead of disciples of either Plato or Aristotle, would their leadership have been more productive in the development of Western civilization?”
Put differently, what was the nature of the war between the remnants of classical civilization and the Bible in the early church and the medieval church? This was the question that Van Til asked in his 1962 class syllabus, Christianity in Conflict. He was convinced that classical philosophy was a liability. He understood what Charles Norris Cochrane described in his book, Christianity and Classical Culture (1940). Classical culture, especially in the area of metaphysics and ethics, was in a state of near-collapse at the beginning of the Christian era. Christianity replaced much of classical culture during the first four centuries. It gave hope to broad masses of the people. Without Christianity, Cochrane argued, the Roman Empire would have collapsed earlier.
There are numerous topics that Christian historians should begin to investigate in depth. They should ask this question: “Has there been progress over the last two millennia, and if so, why?” Here are a few topics.
1. Confession of Faith
A confession of faith is the heart of every civilization. The story of the Tower of Babel is the story of a humanistic confession.
What do men believe about God, man, law, sanctions, and the future? Do their beliefs give them hope in the future? Do their beliefs give them standards by which they can judge their own behavior and the behavior of others? There are rival confessions of faith. There are rival worldviews. Which ones have been most productive over the last two millennia?
Paul wrote that the confession of faith is basic to salvation. “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:9–11). Humanists do their best to persuade their followers that anyone who believes on Christ will be ashamed. Basic to humanists’ strategy is public shaming of Christians. Christian historians must devote their lives to showing why Christians need not be ashamed of Christ and His church. They must produce a counter-narrative to the one that the humanists have been using ever since the Renaissance.
2. Liberty
In the Introduction to Part 3, I discuss Rushdoony’s analysis of the confessional formula of the Council of Chalcedon in 451. As far as I know, he was the first theologian to recognize the connection between this formula and the development of Western liberty. It placed limitations on humanism in their development of state power. By declaring that Jesus Christ is both man and God in two natures, the declaration undermined the attempts of humanists to divinize the state.
The separation of church and state became foundational to Western liberty as a result of the Papal Revolution of 1076. Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII came to an agreement regarding church and state. Each institution would have its own jurisdiction. Each would have its own legal system. This created the Western legal tradition: separate judiciaries. But it was not a Christian historian who studied this agreement in detail. It was Harold Berman in his 1983 book, Law and Revolution. I ask: “Where are Christians who have studied the twin developments of state law and canon law in the medieval era?” They are missing in action. They have always been missing in action. How many Christians have been told that the Magna Carta (1215) was probably written by Archbishop Stephen Langton. If he did not write it, he was the major advisor to the barons. In 1224, he divided the Bible into the chapters that we still use. Yet he is forgotten.
Christianity, not Plato or Aristotle, has been the source of Western liberty. Plato was a communist. Aristotle devoted many years to studying Athenian politics and the constitutions of other Greek city-states, but he did not believe that a successful political order could be established in any community much larger than 40,000 people. Athens was at least one-third slaves. With the military triumph of Alexander, Aristotle’s student, the autonomy of Greek city-states ended. There was nothing in Aristotle that would have produced Western liberty. In any case, Aristotle’s writings on politics and law had almost no influence in Greece and Rome. It was not until the Western church rediscovered him after 1100 that his influence began in Christendom.
3. Economic Growth
The breakdown in trade in the Western Roman Empire began early. The Western half was under assault by barbarian tribes. But, over time, these tribes converted to Christianity. Then there was the assault from Islam that began in the seventh century. Islam captured Spain in 712. Spanish Muslims were finally defeated by Spain in 1492. Nevertheless, there was technological development throughout the medieval era. But it took an atheist historian, Lynn White, to tell this story, and he did not tell it until 1962: Medieval Technology and Social Change.
England and Ireland suffered from constant invasions from Viking looters from about 800 until 1100. The Vikings were eventually converted to Christianity, and they turned to trade rather than war. That marked a turning point in Western economic development around 1100. European trade began to increase.
Economic development increased after the discovery of the New World after 1492. Then, around 1750, came the great transformation: the Industrial Revolution. Economic historians have come to no agreement as to why it began, but this changed the world as never before. Beginning in the British Isles and North America, economic growth began to expand at about 2% per person per year, and except for the 1930s, that rate of increase has continued. The world of 1880 would have been unrecognizable to someone living in 1800. Economic growth has spread to the rest of the world. This is bringing Western civilization to the whole world. The economic fruits of Western civilization have been the hook, but much of the rest of the West is being imported by Asia.
4. Knowledge
Sometime around 1100, Western Europe developed a radically new institution: the university. The structure of the university has remained almost unchanged for nine centuries. The university is uniquely a western creation. It has spread across the world.
Around 1250, scientific knowledge began to advance rapidly. The story of this transformation was first presented by a French physicist and historian, Pierre Duhem. He wrote 10 volumes on this remarkable development. The first five volumes were published between 1913 and 1916. At his death in 1916, his publisher decided not to publish the remaining five volumes. Only through the threat of legal action in 1954 were the remaining volumes published. This was one of the most egregious examples in twentieth-century academia of a deliberate blackout on the part of humanists to conceal a story that overturned Renaissance historiography, Enlightenment historiography, and modern historiography.
Then came the invention of metal movable type around 1440. Movable metal type had been invented two centuries earlier in Korea, but the Koreans did nothing significant with it. Johannes Gutenberg understood its potential. This technology has transformed the world. Inexpensive printed materials provided reasons for billions of people to learn how to read. The division of intellectual labor leapt forward more rapidly than ever before in recorded history.
5. Social Development
In this area of life, it is more difficult to make the case for progress. We are reminded once again that ethical knowledge has not kept pace with technological knowledge.
The Industrial Revolution broke the pattern of family living. Fathers left home for the entire day to work in factories. They no longer took their sons with them into the fields to teach them the basics of agriculture and marriage. This made mothers the primary teachers of both sons and daughters. That was a social revolution. It was probably the most significant transformation in the history of the Western family.
The movement off of farms had begun in the United States by the end of the nineteenth century. In urban areas, tax-funded education began to replace the family as the primary agency for instructing children. This instruction was comprehensive. It shaped the way children lived for several hours a day. It created student peer pressure on a scale never seen before. Professional educators were able to isolate the students from their parents. This provided a tremendous opportunity for humanists, who controlled the institutions of higher education, to begin to indoctrinate the students in a rival worldview. This began as early as the late 1830's in Massachusetts when Horace Mann, a Unitarian, became the head of the newly created State Board of Education. Rushdoony was correct in 1963 in identifying what this educational process was: messianic. The public school was the humanists’ substitute for the church. It was operated by a new humanist priesthood.
The assault against the authority of the Bible, the authority of the church, and the authority of the Christian family has been relentless in the public schools in every nation for over two centuries. This has transformed the ethics of the masses. They have increasingly adopted a rival worldview. This worldview is the culmination of Greek statism and autonomy.
This humanistic worldview is self-destructive. Those who embrace it lose faith in the ethical basis of contemporary institutions. They lose faith in what was once a Christian concept of history. They prefer a lost faith in the structure of history to the doctrine of the final judgment. In this, they are consistent with their worldview.
With the widespread acceptance of humanism in the schools, we have seen the rise of socially deviant behavior. There is an opioid crisis today in the schools. There are declining test scores. Chastity is under assault. Long before this, there was a rising rate of divorce, which began no later than the 1920's in the United States. Despair is on the increase, despite the fact that per capita wealth continues to increase. The world is beginning to discover the emptiness of its faith: salvation by gadgets.
Christianity has been the primary basis of liberty in the West. This in turn created the conditions for trade and economic growth. Trade and economic growth favored the development of new technologies. Medieval monasteries were important in this development until their properties were confiscated by the state, beginning in the mid-sixteenth century. This continued through the French Revolution in the early 1790's.
The West was the first civilization in which the doctrine of progress became widely accepted by intellectual leaders and also the masses. A systematic doctrine of progress began in the seventeenth century within Protestant circles. It was accepted by humanists almost immediately. Karl Marx’s variety of communism was intensely optimistic about the future. That was one of the main reasons why it was adopted by intellectuals and activists around the world. Only when faith in the inevitability of Communism began to recede in the late 1970's and early 1980's in the Soviet Union and China was the survival of Communism called into question. When that optimism died, Communism died in both countries within two decades. A similar loss of optimism in the future is becoming common among humanist intellectual leaders. They are beginning to adopt a worldview that is consistent with their concept of entropy. (See Chapter 10.)
This presents a tremendous opportunity for Christians to challenge humanism in every area of life. Part of this challenge must come from historiography. Christian historians must become self-conscious in their search for overlooked documents—overlooked by humanist historians and even suppressed by them.
The loss of faith in history as a meaningful area of study has accelerated rapidly since the 1960s in the United States. Fewer and fewer students are majoring in history. There will be fewer jobs for history professors. There will be fewer graduate students majoring in history. Textbooks in Western civilization are no longer widely assigned. The worldview of the Renaissance and its successors has always rested heavily on their reinterpretation of Christianity’s effects in developing Western civilization. Fewer students are being exposed to what was a self-conscious exercise in historical revisionism. It is now time for Christians to produce a new revisionism, which is in fact the old story of how Christianity became Christendom in the West.
Every movement needs its own narratives. Every movement needs professional researchers and skilled storytellers who are able to persuade leaders and common people of its legitimacy. But without confidence in the future, the stories cannot gain traction. People do not want to hear about the inevitable failure of their efforts in history.
This is functionally a closed book in the West except for a handful of historians who have studied the development of the Eastern Roman Empire and Eastern Orthodoxy. There is no question that Christendom should be studied as a unit. It is a confessional unit for the most part. Confession is crucial to the establishment of any civilization. In the case of Christendom, the confession was highly developed. It was hammered out through a series of church councils. It was enforced by the church. In some cases, it was enforced by the church on emperors. The early emperors had a tendency to move in the direction of Arianism, because Arianism did not make clear the complete separation of Jesus as divine from Jesus as human. Arianism held that Jesus was created by God the Father. It had a faulty Christology. In his chapter on the Council Chalcedon as having laid the foundation of Western liberty, Rushdoony made this observation.
Statist theology rested on the primacy of nature is the voice and manifestation of God, and nature’s high point of power in history is the state. Statist theology was ready to accommodate grace by giving it a subordinate role, by using grace to buttress nature. It created a nature-grace dialectic which was a revival of the Greek form-matter dialectic and thus implicitly anti-Christian. In such theology, Christ simply becomes a support to the state rather than Lord over church and state. . . .But a true Christology is not dialectical but trinitarian. It rests, not on the dialectics of nature versus grace, but on the moral crisis, sin versus grace. Nature is in need of redemption. Christ enters the world to establish a new humanity in whom He creates by his regenerating and sanctifying power a new nature, one in communion with Him. God has no war against nature, and His struggle is not against nature but against sin. In the redeemed humanity, Christ rules over all things, state and church included (Foundations of Social Order, pp. 72–73).
The temptation was to imagine that man can become God. Then, collectively, men can create a divine state. This was the theology of Babel. The early church creeds undermined this theology.
The historiographical question is this: how did the two civilizations reflect an almost common confession of faith, yet were so different? Next, why was liberty developed more systematically in the West than in the Christian East? This is especially curious in light of this fact: the Eastern empire achieved a goal that is unique in history. It established a gold coinage in the early fourth century that it did not debase for 800 years.
Christian historians need to ask a series of questions. Then they need to get these questions answered in terms of the available historical evidence. These questions apply to history from 325 to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
What were unique identifying points of difference in their theologies?What were the major differences in the relations between church and state?
Why was Western theology more judicial than Eastern theology?
Who were the key theological figures in both cultures?
Why were they the key figures?
How did these differences affect the development of the two cultures?
Why was the centralized state stronger in the East than in the West?
How did each of the civilizations deal with Islam after 632?
What was the history of commerce in the two civilizations?
What were the comparative rates of technological development in the two civilizations?
How did the two systems of law, church and state, develop in the two civilizations?
What was the influence of Roman law in each?
What were the main ideas of political philosophy in the two civilizations?
Which philosophical influences from Greece were stronger in each of the civilizations?
What were the primary roles of the monastic orders in the two civilizations?
How did historiography differ in the two civilizations?
Toynbee was correct. There are five civilizations: Western civilization, Eastern Orthodox civilization, Islam, India, and Asia. None of them has been successful in persuading the others to adopt the confession of faith in each of them. Islam does not evangelize; it conquers militarily. India does not evangelize or conquer. Neither do the cultures of Asia. Eastern orthodoxy does not evangelize. Catholicism has systematically evangelized ever since the late sixth century. But its first major success after 1492 has been in Latin America. This was the result of military enslavement, followed by massive depopulation during the first century of Spanish rule after 1492. Members of the surviving tribes were evangelized by Catholic priests. Catholicism has been successful in recent decades in evangelizing those parts of sub-Saharan Africa that were under Catholic European powers in the early twentieth century. Protestant foreign missions did not begin until the 1720's with the Moravians. They began the world’s longest prayer meeting in 1727, which lasted 24 hours a day for a century. They prayed for foreign missions. They were highly influential in the career of John Wesley. Then came the Baptist mission to India run by William Carey in the late 1790's.
The East India Company set up trading outposts in India, beginning in the early 1600's. The Dutch East India Company set up trading outposts at about the same time in Indonesia. The commercial ventures eventually led to national political intervention to create empires. This was a form of conquest, not evangelism. In the late nineteenth century, European nations began to set up colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. The Dutch had begun this in South Africa in the 1600's. There was some attempted evangelism by the English and the Dutch. The results were minimal.
When a few ships of the United States Navy sailed into Tokyo Bay in 1854, that got the attention of the Japanese leadership. That visit led to a minimal trade agreement. The Japanese systematically transformed their own society in terms of Western technology after the Meiji restoration in 1868. This was a coup d’état. The Japanese systematically and rapidly adopted Western technology, especially military technology. They built a fleet. They were able to defeat Russia in 1905. But the Japanese did not import Christianity.
In the late 1800s, foreign missionaries, especially Protestant missionaries, went to China. Some were evangelicals. Some were theological liberals. Their ideas led to the Chinese revolution of 1911. That in turn led to a division between Chang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-Tung which began in the 1920's. It ended only with the victory of the Communists in 1949. Mao imposed Western philosophy in the form of Marxism from 1949 until his death in 1976. He also killed about 50 million Chinese.
Asia has imported Western technologies on a systematic basis since about 1900. Exporting firms in Japan and China became major trading partners with Western consumers. Then, beginning in the 1990's, Protestant evangelism began having visible effects in India and China. It has had no effect in Japan. Neither has Catholic evangelism.
A similar expansion of Catholic and Protestant missions in sub-Saharan Africa has taken place since about 1970. Hundreds of millions of Africans have been converted to the two church traditions.
Western civilization has gained a foothold in East Asia based on technology and trade. Some aspects of Western civilization, including Christian religion, are now beginning to establish a foothold in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Protestant churches are beginning to spread rapidly in Latin America. In both Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are the dominant forces. Pentecostalism began in 1906 in a tiny church in Los Angeles: the Azusa Street Church. It has been the fastest growing Christian movement in church history.
Christian historians should discuss the development of Christendom as the basis of both Western civilization and Eastern Orthodox civilization. These rival Christian civilizations have been centers of economic, political, and scientific development ever since the fourth century. Western civilization has developed at an accelerating rate since about 1500, and at an historically unprecedented rate after 1750. Humanist historians have claimed that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were the primary sources of these positive developments. Christian historians, by remaining mute, have surrendered to the narratives of the humanists. This surrender must end.