NOT ONLY WAS THE BIBLE THE WELLSPRING OF SPIRITUALITY FOR THE MODERN DEVOTION MOVEMENT; AS VISHAL MANGALWADI ARGUES IN HIS BOOK, THE BOOK THAT MADE YOUR WORLD (2011), THE BIBLE WAS ‘THE BOOK OF FREEDOMS’ WHICH HAS INSPIRED LIBERATION AND EMANCIPATION THROUGH THE AGES, PRODUCING RADICALLY DIFFERENT IDEAS THAN THOSE WHICH SHAPED HIS OWN ASIAN CULTURE.
Europe celebrates diversity because it follows many teachers. If Europeans share some ‘genes’ in common–that is, ideas that make Europeans different from Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures–then it is because historically they have one spiritual father: Paul.
Pagan Europe crucified Jesus after declaring him ‘Not-Guilty.’ It’s philosophies and myths proved incapable of inventing the liberating concept of inalienable rights to life and liberty. The life-giving command, ‘You shall not murder’, came from Mt. Sinai to Europe.
How did Christ save a savage Europe? He sent Paul to liberate the GraecoRoman world with his weapons of Love and Truth. That is, with the cross—the emblem of suffering and shame, and Truth—observation and understanding of revelation.
Obedience to Truth Sets Free
Three centuries prior to Paul, the Greeks had grasped that Philosophy was a futile path to Truth. In desperation they had fallen prey to storying. Paul countered European myths with witness to truth. The Lord Jesus had told him, ‘Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.’ (Acts 23:11, ESV)
Greek democracy had killed Socrates; surrender to truth began to set Europe free. It took centuries, but surrendering to the authority of revealed/ concealed/understood truth created the modern world of liberty, science and history.
After confronting Athens, the source of Europe’s intellectual endarkenment, Paul came to Rome—the mainstay of Europe’s military might. The Liberator sent Paul as a prisoner to set Caesar free. The Messiah invited Paul, the persecutor, to choose suffering in order to move forward the divine mission to liberate Europe.
‘Nation’ Liberated Europe from Empire and Enslaved it to Fascism
The inquiring Athenians were victims of philosophy as well as of the pagan (Babylonian/Persian/Graeco-Roman) idea of Empire. Through them Paul gave to Europe the idea of nation—the divine prescription of international peace, prosperity, and liberty. Paul said that God ‘made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him . . .’ (Acts 17:26-27)
Why did it take a redeemed Jew to inject the concept of freedom into European genes? It was because the Jewish experience of Exodus from the house of slavery began the process of compiling the Bible—Europe’s sourcebook of liberty.
The Bible’s idea of ‘nation’ inspired the Dutch to initiate the Eighty Year War against Spain’s ‘Holy Roman Empire’. Formally, Europe yielded to God’s idea of nation only in the 1648 ‘Peace of Westphalia.’
Divorced from the Bible, Nationalism led Europe and the world into terrible wars.
The EU—a Model For Resolving the Paradox of Nation and Caliphate?
During WW1, in 1916, through the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Europe divided the Ottoman Empire into nations. It was an attempt to replace the Islamic idea of Caliphate with the European idea of nations . . . but without the Bible.
Just as secularization of ‘nation’ plunged Europe and the world into wars, now the European idea of secular Islamic ‘nations’ has plunged the Muslim world into a horrible mess—the devastation could last for a long time.
However, the EU could become a model for the Middle-East, for South Asia, as well as for the Americas struggling with their issues of illegal immigration. The EU’s attempt to unite nations through peace, without becoming an empire that obliterates nations, is exactly what Paul taught Romans about God’s mission to bring peace to the nations.
After Moses (Genesis 10-22; Deuteronomy 32:8 etc.), it was Isaiah who best explained how the Messiah will bring peace to the world by replacing empires with nations-in-peace:
It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, … and all the nations shall flow to it, …
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord… that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.”…
He shall judge between the nations,… and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2: 2-4)
And again, Isaiah predicted that, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone… For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.” (Isaiah 9:2-7)
To Bless Europa, Paul Made Abraham Her Theological Father
Genetically, Abraham fathered Ishmael and Israel. One of Paul’s greatest achievements was to make Abraham Europe’s theological father. For Paul did not think that God promised heaven to Abraham. He told Europeans that God’s ‘promise to Abraham and his offspring [was] that he would be heir of the world . . . the father of many nations’ (Romans 4: 13-17).
It was from the book of Genesis that Paul figured out God’s plan to give Europe to Abraham and to bless Europe with great nations.
Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, ‘Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you’. . . And God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of [nations] shall come from her.’ (Genesis 17: 3-6 and 15-16).
Righteousness of Faith Made Abraham the Heir of the World
Europe began to be reformed five centuries ago because Martin Luther rejected Aristotle and became Paul’s pupil. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans taught him the crucial non-humanistic lesson that Abraham inherited (not heaven but) Europe and the world because he was justified by faith (Romans 4). The Europe that Paul saw had been enveloped by diabolical moral and social darkness. For it suppressed the truth with unrighteousness and relied upon the futility of naturalistic/humanistic thinking (Romans 1: 18-32).
The Paradox of Peace and Spiritual Conflict
Paul’s readers in Rome were living in Satan’s kingdom. He sowed the seeds of Europe’s optimism. The obedience of faith to the God of peace, he wrote, will enable the righteous to crush Satan under their feet )prior to the Second Coming):
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet… Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel… according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith. (Romans 16: 20-27)