CHRISTIAN TOTALITARIANISM: A POSSIBLE PROGRAMME

If the reflective study of history is to be more than an account of who did what to whom when (as Aristotle apparently put it), the history of ideas and of their cultural impact must extend beyond what someone said, why they chose to say it and its immediate results, to compass also its longer effects, whether good or bad, and the reasons for them.

It may seem strange to begin a discussion of the Catholic Church's relationship to what we now call secular society by quoting extensively from the views of a proto-Byzantine theologian. But John Chrysostom, though an extremist outside the Western tradition, is all the more informative for that. He represents what was a real possibility for Catholicism, and one which, though now normally rejected, has proved a recurring temptation.