Judaism; Fossil or Ferment, VII Epilogue; Zero Hour 2

2.

One cannot but be moved by these manifestations of the spiritual travail of a human soul. The bitter disillusionment of the ex-agnostic with man, which has led him back to God but not yet to religion, proves what he set out to disprove, namely, that human history has been “nasty, brutish, and short.”²¹See V/189. That Hobbes was right when he penned those pessimistic words is born out by the A Study of History; that he may yet be proved wrong, thanks to God’s love for man, is Toynbee’s hope and faith. A Study of History is a devastating account of the inadequacy of man. Toynbee formulates the problem but knows no answer. He does not run for refuge to a church; he does run to God. Far be it from us to blame him for that. However, his clinging to God is not a solution, but an escape—an escape from the terrible vision of the historian. No wonder therefore that at Zero Hour he has nothing positive to offer as a contribution to the solution of the present crisis of man.

That man is a problematic creature we have known for a long time; that he ought to be good and believe in God and repent and pray and be of a contrite spirit is no new discovery either. The problem has always been how to change man. Toynbee says that only God can change him through the mystery of Transfiguration. But, according to Toynbee, God has done it at least once; unfortunately, the success was neither long enduring nor very convincing. A handful of saints have been produced, but man in the mass remained subject to the sway of Original Sin; and today we are perhaps worse off than we have ever been before, if one may judge by the new outbursts of human criminality in modern history and by what is now threatening the future of the human race. Toynbee’s advice is: Imitate Jesus and accept suffering; through suffering you will be reborn and saved. Actually, the older advice that man should be good and virtuous was not bad either. It would be a very good thing indeed if people imitated Jesus. But, alas, Toynbee forgets to say how people might be moved to accept suffering as a personal sacrifice for the sake of their salvation. In order to be able to act, in mass, on the Toynbean advice, they must be reborn first—in which case, of course, the advice would become superfluous.

However, apart from this general consideration, Toynbee lets us down badly in his final message. What does he mean by the acceptance of suffering and waiting for God? Shall we abolish hospitals and stop curing diseases? Shall we give up modern hygiene, forego the amenities of modern civilization? Shall we live on herbs and roots instead of steak? Shall we all become ascetics? It is unlikely that this is his message. The imitation of Jesus could have only one meaning, to act as Jesus acted: not to resist evil; to reject conquest by the sword, even though one is sure to be victorious with the sword;²²VI/260-1. to do what, as we saw, the Maccabees and the Zealots failed to do, to live by the ethos of gentleness; to go out into the world to conquer souls by submitting to suffering, imposed by others, as did the Israelitish exiles in Babylon and the primitive Christians in the disintegrating Hellenic society. The present crisis, says Toynbee, is the “supreme opportunity” for evangelism; but he fails to go on and say: In the conflict with a materialistic Communism let us turn into the path that alone may lead to salvation; let us destroy our weapons, throw away our atom bombs; let us beware of repeating the tragic error of the Maccabees and the satanic Jewish Zealots of resisting force with force. If as a result of such an attitude Communism should conquer the world, what does it really matter? The conflict between Communism and the West is a secular as well as a religious drama, “an otherworldly mystery play”; but “from the religious standpoint of the preachers of spiritual salvation the secular drama is a vanity of vanities.”²³See VIII/480.

Toynbee fails shamefully by not having the moral courage to apply the logical outcome of his entire thesis to the present situation, to translate the terms of his very vehement criticism of the Maccabees and Jewish Zealots into a clarion call to the conscience of present-day Christendom. If his ten volumes have any meaning, they should have caused him to turn to the Western democracies, or at least to the confessedly Christian countries, with a manifesto: Know ye then that all who take the sword shall perish by the sword. Turn your atomic piles into peaceful uses. Submit to Communist domination meekly and accept suffering, for suffering is the key to salvation. Remember that “the gospel of Christianity is not addressed to societies but to souls; and any soul in any social environment is a potential convert to the way of salvation.”²⁴Ibid. Had he spoken thus, one might still not have had to accept his philosophy or theology, but one could have respected him for the courage of his convictions. But Toynbee does not have such courage. The travail of his soul produces the wisdom: Let us suffer and wait for the Lord, but let us also keep our powder dry for all eventualities. What then does he mean by the acceptance of suffering? Apparently, the spiritual travail of the soul, derived from the heroic perusal of the annals of human history. Mr. Toynbee is like the great diver, who explores the depth of all the oceans; believing that he has at last succeeded in wresting from them their innermost secret, he comes to the surface—with a handful of glittering sand.