SPRING PROGRAMME 2025

The dates are:

Tuesday 18th February

Tuesday 15th April

Tuesday 20th May

We will be meeting at Worcester Baptist Church, in the hall. Doors open at 7.30pm for coffee and cake, and the talks will begin at 8pm.

A PREHISTORY OF VIOLENCE?

Revd. Dr. Stephen May

Tuesday 15th April

7.30 for 8pm

The 2005 film after which the title of this paper is named, A History of Violence’ (starring Viggo Mortensen) is - among other things - a tale of a man trying unsuccessfully to escape his violent past.*

Saint Augustine is often criticised for supposedly inventing the concept of original sin, of an indelible propensity in humans towards wickedness. Yet many scientists now seem to think that humanity is unalterably conditioned towards violence by its own evolutionary past. What does an examination of human prehistory through tell us about the ‘mark of Cain’? 

For Thomas Hobbes humanity’s life in the state of nature was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrariwise, good and peaceful, corrupted only by socialisation (‘man is born free but is everywhere in chains’.) Enlightenment optimism about human nature and the ‘noble savage’ is questionable for many, not least through our historical experience of horrors, cruelty and depravity.* However, following the lead of influential archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (and mythologist Joseph Campbell), some feminists now view human life prior to five thousand years ago as peaceful when under female leadership. Following a survey of such developments in archaeology and anthropology - but without undertaking a precise (sociological) analysis of the causes of violence - a Christian response will be attempted (with a view to showing how Christ shows us what it is to be human).

* Cf. The Fifth Element!

The Revd. Dr. Stephen May is a historian, theologian and retired Vicar who was formerly Lecturer in Systematic Theology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, his lectures including a course on Theology and Science.