Fr Dr Sooraj George Pittappillil
soorajgeorge@hotmail.com

Until my university years I had been quite at home with the Dionysian division of history as taught in schools and endorsed by publication giants. (Accordingly, history was divided into two periods, namely, BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini). Indeed, vast majority of populace across our planet do subscribe to this pattern of division without any iota of discomfort, save some hard-core secular academicians who insist on the use of BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era) in lieu of BC & AD, in order not to offend religiously sensitive people. As a Christian believer, I was pretty proud of the Dionysian division.
However, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers’ Origin and Goal of History challenged my perspectives. He speaks of an axial period (Achsenzeit) which functions as the axis of the history of mankind. It is a period roughly between 800 and 200 B.C. He says “An axis of world history, if such a thing exists, would have to be discovered empirically, …This axis would be situated at the point in history which gave birth to everything which, since then, man has been able to be, the point most overwhelmingly fruitful in fashioning humanity; … This axis of history is to be found in the period around 500 B.C., in the spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 B.C. It is there that we meet with the deepest cut dividing line in history.” This period, Jaspers observes, witnessed to the birth and development of religious, scientific, philosophical, political and literary kinds with a thitherto unprecedented momentum. Besides, it was a ubiquitous phenomenon which made its imprints all over the world. This is a time when rationality overrode superstition and belief. Accordingly, Jaspers finds it meaningless to consider the birth of Jesus as the axis of history.

“No other counter culture than his left a mark so visible in the world. Yes, Nativity of Jesus is the most natural axis of world history.”

Second challenge to my pride came from Nietzsche. Levelling acidic accusations against Socrates and Jesus Christ, Nietzsche held that Jesus and Christianity have brought an unhealthy canon of morality to the world. Being a strong admirer of power and instincts, Nietzsche could not accommodate the Christian Gospel of charity. Therefore, Nietzsche maintained that the introduction of Christianity to this world proved detrimental to the then existing virile morality. Thus, to retrieve the classical virile morality, we have to turn the present morality, dominated by the Socratic and Christian values, upside down. Nietzsche calls his ambitious project, ‘transvaluation of all values.” Accordingly, to Nietzsche, Christmas is an abominable day. Nietzsche says: “This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be able to see…. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race….And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—The transvaluation of all values!”
Are you down in the mouth now? Do you still find any stuff to believe that the birth of Jesus functions as the axis of world history? Notwithstanding the opinions of Jaspers and Nietzsche, I strongly believe that Christmas is the axis of world history par excellence. The life of Jesus makes a robust and convincing statement that no one ever – either before him or after him – gives mankind the hope to collaborate socially, to relate with God confidently and to believe in the innate decency and natural goodness of human beings. Despite being completely divine, he got through the human predicaments in a neat human way. No one has ever taught us such telling lessons about the proactive use of human will in overcoming temptations. No other humanist has ever put it so plainly like him: ‘let humanity, let want, let shame, let misery God attend.’ No other counter culture than his left a mark so visible in the world. Yes, Nativity of Jesus is the most natural axis of world history.