CHAPTER 1: 1492: The Seven Deadly Sins Tumble out of Europe

The European Conquest of the New World: Synopsis

FREED BY MONOTHEISM FROM A PARALYZING WORSHIP OF OBJECTS, Europeans rebelliously argued with that one God in ways that added to their destructive dynamism. Divinely revealed, Christianity denied innate human goodness, diagnosed humanity as sinful and rebellious and exalted a God whom humans could not manipulate. Its once-for-all text, Scripture, stood as a barrier to any attempts to alter it for human purposes. Even its Reformation exacerbated the dynamism: Calvinist saints' seeing eternal consequences in daily deeds were nearly as intense and dynamic as rebellious merchants. The Reformation also showed that any religious monopoly would face competition. Bishops and rulers could not make Christianity as secure a support for their status quo as Confucianism was for Manchu and mandarins. It provoked Europeans to rebellion or to holy zeal, so it could not integrate European society.

Try though they might, using New World "noble savages" as examples, they could not return to pre-Christian "innocence." They could not invent a human-centered creation myth and religion which everyone would accept and use to achieve integration. They could not manipulate Christianity indefinitely, and they could not escape it. They would have to hurtle into the future "at a forced clip" with a society and culture that was not integrated or controlled. As Sale notes, Europe's "increasingly vigorous capitalist system" was "more materialist, for sure, than any other economy, more expansionist, more volatile and energetic . . . and almost everywhere without the kinds of moral inhibitions found in the world's other high cultures."

It was apocalyptic in its destructive dynamism, a proof of history's linear character, a guarantee that one day history would come to an end. It was impossible to project this "cultural hothouse" advancing at "a forced clip" and avoiding some kind of catastrophe indefinitely. Even sixteenth-century Europeans, who had hardly seen the start of new accomplishments, understood that "the almost miraculous sequence of events which led to the discovery, conquest and conversion of the New World" tended "to reinforce the linear and progressive" view of history.

A student of biblical prophecy, Columbus believed that by reaching new lands he was hastening the end of the world. The prophet Isaiah and Jesus the Messiah had stated that the end could not come until the gospel had been preached to all nations. Pauline Watts notes that "Columbus's apocalyptic vision of the world and of the special role that he was destined to play in the unfolding of events that would presage the end of time was a major stimulus for his voyages."⁶¹ Without justifying his actions, or those of other explorers and conquerors, we can say that Columbus was correct here. By starting the process whereby this dynamic European culture became globally dominant, Columbus made global history an irretrievably linear history.

His advancing of God's purpose in history was somewhat inadvertent, however, for he thought God's purpose was inextricably linked to his and to Spain's. It was not, for they were engaged in an argument with him. He used them to accomplish his purposes anyway but did not excuse their actions. Columbus's view of biblical prophecy does not justify his actions toward the Taino, but neither do his actions make biblical prophecies erroneous. One can have a right idea and still do wrong. One can have truth and still rebel against it. Europeans were doing just that. God's ends did not justify their means, even if they had been pursuing his ends, which they were not.