Studia Gilsoniana 3 (2014): 49–62 | ISSN 2300–0066 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. The Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy CHRISTOPHER DAWSON Professor Jude Dougherty whom we honor by this special collection of essays has devoted his entire career as dean of the faculty of philosophy at the Catholic University of America and as the author of many publica- tions to the study of Western culture, religion and science, and has shown a great affinity with the thought of the illustrious English historian and philosopher Christopher Dawson. As Dawson had done before him, Dougherty in all his works stresses the overruling importance of the classi- cal, humanistic education and the central place and role of religion in our Western culture. One of his latest books, The Logic of Religion, presents an examination of the role of religion from a historical and philosophical point of view1. Well known are also his Western Creed, Western Identity and The Nature of Scientific Explanation,2 in which he shows the value of Aris- totle’s understanding of nature and, at the same time, his own capacity of presenting a masterful overview of complex philosophical issues. Charac- teristic of Jude Dougherty is the wide range of his reading, something we admire also in Christopher Dawson: a huge historical knowledge and an amazing acquaintance with all relevant literature. As Dawson was for many years the editor of the Dublin Review, Jude Dougherty has for more than thirty years directed The Review of Metaphysics. Christopher Dawson was born in 1889 in Wales, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and was lecturer in the history of culture at Uni- 1 See Jude P. Dougherty, The Logic of Religion (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003). 2 See Jude P. Dougherty’s two books: Western Creed: Western Identity: Essays in Legal and Social Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), and The Nature of Scientific Explanation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of Amer- ica Press, 2013). 50 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. versity College, Exeter. In his numerous books he studies the factors which determine the character of the great cultures and analyzes their different components. In order to do so, it is not enough, he said, to apply categories of the philosophy of history but we must also use the laborious work of social anthropologists.3 In his deepdelving studies of the great world cul- tures Dawson himself has done so and provides a wealth of information which provokes the admiration of his readers. He passed away in 1970. In his first book The Age of the Gods (1928), Dawson describes the material and spiritual life of man from the oldest civilizations up to the beginning of the Greek organization of city living and its developing edu- cation. The book has been called the best short account of the life of pre- historic man. Dawson himself sees the book as an attempt not to present a series of isolated facts, but to describe the ancient cultures as living reali- ties and as the result of many interacting spiritual and material impulses. Dawson’s perhaps best known book is his The Making of Europe (1932), where we read that it is one of the great merits of the study of the history of religion and science that it takes us beyond the present moment, helps us to overcome parochialism and to discover realities otherwise un- known to us. From the very beginning of the book he declares that it is from the Greeks that we derive all that is most distictive in Western as opposed to Oriental culture. This spiritual heritage came to us through the Romans: after Caesar and Augustus Central and Western Europe were subjected to a process of progressive romanization for 400 years. As the poet Prudentius said, the Roman peace has prepared the road for the com- ing of Christ. It was to Rome that the new peoples owed the very idea of a common civilization.4 In this great book which made Dawson famous, are successively described the foundations of what was to become Europe: the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, the classical tradition and the “barbarians” who invaded the Empire and, at last, its downfall. The author next examines the influence of Byzanthium and the expansion of Moslem culture to turn in Part III to the conversion of the barbarians and the caro- lingian renaissance, the rise of mediaeval unity. Dawson sees the eleventh century as a turning point in European history: the Dark Ages come to an end and Western culture emerges. He points out that the merits of the study 3 Cf. Christopher Dawson, “Arnold Toynbee and the Study of History”, International Affairs CXXXI (1955): 402. 4 See Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe. An Introduction to the History of Euro- pean Union (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 20. Christopher Dawson 51 of the history of culture and religion is that it takes us out of ourselves and makes us discover realities otherwise unknown to us and helps us to be- come aware of our heritage. The Catholic Church had a pervasive influ- ence on European unity; before being subjects of a duke, count or king, people were Christians, and the Church promoted the same ethical catego- ries of thought and introduced through the use of Latin a common way of thinking; for almost 2000 years young people were educated in the clas- sics, read the same books and learned the same standards of conduct. What made Christopher Dawson even better known all through the English speaking world were his Gifford Lectures of 1947 and 1948. The first series of 10 lectures had as its title Religion and Culture. Natural theology and the elements of religion—God, the supernatural—and their relation to culture are discussed. Dawson admits that among profes- sional historians there still is some distrust of the term culture as not hav- ing a very precise meaning. He himself considers culture as the building of a common way of life by a community of people, in consideration of its physical environment and economic needs. A basic point of departure is the observation that the Divine en- closes the whole of nature. The rest of what makes up the religions has been added later, often in a mythical form. It appears that religions have a creative role with regard to culture. Not to speak only of the role of Christianity in the making of Europe Dawson points to the influence of Buddhism on Tibet and on the Mongols; that most aggressive warrior peo- ple of Asia gradually changed their habits under the influence of a religion of non-aggression, which appears to have contributed to the cessation of the age-old drive of the peoples of the steppes to East and West. On the other hand, the native way of life and the religion of the peoples of the steppes influenced on their turn Buddhism and their gods became members of the Buddhist pantheon. After dealing with the sources of religious knowledge and the reli- gious organs of society, prophets, priesthood and sacrifice, Dawson de- scribes how the king has always been distinguished from the tyrant or mag- istrate by the possession of a sort of divine mandate. In a next lecture we hear about sacred science and initiation in the knowledge of the tribe or the people. Every culture develops its own techniques for coordinating the life of the society with the order of nature. With the observation of the solstices and the development of a solar calendar there was an increasing awareness of the order of nature. The more people observed the stars, the more they became impressed with a celestial order. Dawson reminds us that astral 52 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. theology acquired immense prestige and quotes a text from Book XII, ch. 8 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to us, their posterity, a tradition in the form of a myth, that these sub- stances are gods and that the divine encloses the whole of nature . Later they saw these gods in the form of men or like some of the other animals . but that they thought these first substances to be gods, we must regard this as an inspired utterance.5 In fact the conviction or feeling prevailed that the sea and the land are full of the divine. The sun and the moon give signs to us that it is time to wake up and to do our work and to rest; the seasons of the year tell us the time for sowing and harvesting. Behind these natural powers at work there is a common ruling principle and man’s kinship with this divine principle was acknowledged and celebrated. In his next lecture, chapter 8, of Religion and Culture Dawson re- flects on the importance of law in the history of culture, law as hallowed custom and as divine decree. China has preserved the ideal of a sacred order, which remained a living force for the Chinese people down to our time. But one wonders what will happen now that the country opened the gates first to the Marxist ideology and subsequently to the invasion of modern technological culture. In chapter 9 we read that in almost all civilizations religion and in- tellectual culture have been practically inseparable. There has been a gen- eral quest for enlightenment. If prayer is natural to man, we should not reject the efforts of introversion by which the soul seeks the way to a tran- scendent absolute reality.