Transcript for Interview with Carlos Eire on Christian History
Read the full interview transcript.
0. Introduction
For a religion centered around love, Christianity has an incredibly violent history. The Crusades not only killed Muslims, but also sacked other Christian cities like Constantinople. The Christianization of the Americas wiped out entire civilizations, and the most violent wars in early modern history were ignited over theological disputes. The Christian religion of love and truth has so often led to hate and deceit. How do we make sense of this troubled past? How can these scandals not threaten one's faith?
My guest today is Yale's Carlos Eire, who is a practicing Catholic and acclaimed historian. Professor Eire has spent his entire life investigating Christian history, and understands this dark, violent, and troubled past more clearly than almost anyone alive, and yet his faith remains strong. Even more surprisingly, you will hear why Professor Eire is Christian precisely because of, and not despite, this troubled history.
1. Why Christianity
Johnathan Bi: So, professor, you have written many works on Christian history, but also have contributed to books about many different world religions. And the first question I wanted to ask you is, do you not despair when you look out at all the different possible religious opinions that could be held, not only between East and West, reincarnation, but even within the Abrahamic faiths, even within Christianity, even within Catholicism? Just the sheer variety of different opinions held on the most fundamental of questions, isn't that a cause for despair? "Do I really have the right one?"
Carlos Eire: It can be, and occasionally it does verge on despair, or can verge on despair or even cross the line, but after a while, I'm talking about a lifetime, all the differences point in a single direction, which is that there is more than this.
Johnathan Bi: Right.
Carlos Eire: So, there's more than this. So, how do you navigate all these differences? Well some things in some religions don't make any sense to me.
Johnathan Bi: What's an example?
Carlos Eire: Like for instance, reincarnation. I think that's so awful, so cruel.
Johnathan Bi: Cruel or untrue? Because it could be true and cruel at the same time.
Carlos Eire: Well, yeah, you know, it's scary. It's actually so scary.
Johnathan Bi: More than eternal hell, for you?
Carlos Eire: Yes.
Johnathan Bi: Why?
Carlos Eire: Not more than eternal hell, but close to it. It's another version of hell. I speak from experience because actually, despite the fact that I'm Catholic, my father's family, they were all theosophists.
Johnathan Bi: What's that?
Carlos Eire: Oh, theosophy is a 19th century blend of Western religion and Hinduism, as part of the so called "esoteric" secret traditions passed on by great spiritual beings through the ages. So, my father's family, they all believed in reincarnation.
Johnathan Bi: As Christians?
Carlos Eire: Yeah, they didn't see any conflict with it. It's very typical, late 19th century, early 20th century in Latin America. It's fairly common that your Catholicism is mixed with... Other things. But anyway, back to the point that why I don't despair because my own religious experiences are such within the Catholic reality. I accept it while being puzzled. I accept the plethora of different revelations, if you want to call them that. And I'm curious about the other religions, but I'm not drawn to them because I'm so comfortable in mine. And I've had experiences which kind of have proven to me the wisdom, the truth of my tradition. So, having been exposed to others, having grown up in a religiously divided household, although we were all nominally Catholic, right? And having my father tell me about his reincarnations, because he claimed he could remember his past lives, I guess you could say that pushed me in the Catholic direction.
I came to the United States without my parents. I was 11. It was an airlift of Cuban children that lasted from 1961 to the Missile Crisis of October 1962. 14,000 Cuban children were brought to the US, and it was well-organized chaos. Where are we going to put these children? I ended up with a Jewish foster family. At that time, all religions scared me. So, I was very glad to know I was with a Jewish family, because I thought, "Now I won't have to go to church." But they forced me to go to church.
Johnathan Bi: I see. They didn't go, obviously.
Carlos Eire: No, of course not. No. My foster father was actually an atheist, a Jewish atheist. But no, they forced me to go to church and gave me money to put in the collection plate. And these people were so wonderful, so utterly wonderful. I'd grown up in a culture that was 80% Catholic, and just about everyone I knew was Catholic or a mix of Catholic and something else. But anyway, I was with these wonderful people who were so just truly wonderful but didn't believe the same things I did. It just gave me a different perspective on... On things.
Johnathan Bi: Right. So, the first thing in your reply was that all these religions point to the fact that there's something more. But it sounds like you want to go a step further and say, and you're also more certain that your understanding, the Catholic understanding specifically, of that "more," is the correct one or you've seen enough validation to be comfortable.
Carlos Eire: Yes.
Johnathan Bi: However, here's the question. In the same way that Christians, at least in history, when they felt lenient, have interpreted the other religions as approximating the truth, right? Like Aristotle, Plato, getting close to the truth, the other religions make the similar claims about Christianity.
Carlos Eire: Of course.
Johnathan Bi: So, when I was in this Tibetan monastery, which I practiced in Nepal for a few months, and I talked to them about Christianity, they're like, "Oh, Jesus. Wonderful." They called him the Great Bodhisattva, “the great saint of the West,” that he came into the Jewish tradition and he was able to turn this monotheistic religion into something while not capturing the full truth, got a bit closer at the heart of compassion, just like Bodhisattva. And so when you look at all the great religious saints of the other traditions and all the fantastic religious thinkers, the people who could rival your Augustines and your Aquinases, people like Nagarjuna or Al-Ghazali, isn't that a cause for despair?
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