Changing The Calendar- AD or CE

Dear Joanne,

Re. your wish to reset the calendar. (Northern Advocate, Oct. 11)
   
You said:

• “British and Australian authorities have declared the terms BC(before Christ) and AD (anno domini- year of the Lord) are out of date and should be replaced with BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) to make our calendar more secular.

You said:

• “time is an arbitrary human construct” 

No, you confuse the units of measurement of time with time itself. Most physicists agree time is a part of the space/time continuum, a dimension: Time is what clocks measure, it is the units which are arbitrary- not time itself. Augustine said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not." Not much has changed since the third century!

You said:

• “History is figments of opinion…” 

No, one of the surest ways to differentiate history from opinion is to listen to those whose own worldview is not sympathetic to the worldview of those whose history she is speaking of. The words of the historian W.E.H. Lecky, who was no believer in revealed religion, have often been quoted: 'The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the ample record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortation of moralists. This has indeed been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life." If you reduce all history to opinion, you would never write your opinion pieces, because, once written, they become history- have I not historically assessed your opinion accurately?

You said:

•  “But where to begin [the calendar].Certainly not with any partisan religious figures.” 

The trouble is your suggestion of Galileo shows an extreme partisanship of your own. Scientism, the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning, is hardly neutral. The Dawkins devotee’s dogmatic embrace of scientific methodology would reduce all knowledge to only that which is measurable!

You said: 

• “Galileo… was sentenced as a heretic…for daring to suggest that, contrary to scripture, the earth orbits the sun.” 

No, in fact Galileo was in support of scripture that uses grammatical convention as we do to this day. In everyday discourse we still speak of “sunrise” do we not? I share Galileo’s view that there is no conflict between faith and science. It was hardly the fault of scripture or Galileo if they are misinterpreted.

It is for good reason that the advent of Christ has had such a lasting impact and this is reflected in the Western calendar.

L.T. Jeyachandaran writes: 

Jesus lived in an obscure part of the globe under Roman rule 2000 years ago. He did not travel more than 200 miles on a single journey in his lifetime; he never wrote a book and did not speak a foreign language. He lived under the stigma of an illegitimate birth, was in public ministry for only three years, and died a criminal's death. Yet his influence has spread far and wide throughout the world. Christians claim that this man was unique, and the evidence seems overwhelmingly to sustain it. Even those who would rather dismiss him have difficulty denying his incomparable mark on human history. As biblical scholar F.F. Bruce notes, "Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar." Jesus’ life in and of itself is distinctive; that he remains a life of influence is truly exceptional.

As a “journo” you ought to distinguish between “spin” and truth, renowned fellow journalist Malcolm Muggeridge said:

“We look back upon history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

“I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

“All in one lifetime.All in one lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

“All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.”

“Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”

The great value of history is found when we remember it in order to avoid repeating its mistakes, for that reason alone our calendar should remain firmly pegged to Christ.