Murray Soupcoff
When will the “caring” activists of the left ever learn? Never have so few individuals with so many good intentions created so much miseryfor so many people whom they wanted to help. As the social-engineering debacles of the last half century in the United States have demonstrated, carelessness in “caring” for thedisadvantaged in our society only leads to a glaringly uncaring result.
After all, it was pioneering liberal-left social engineers in the 1940’s and 50’s who came up with the not-so-creative idea of fighting poverty in American slums by ripping down existing for-profitrental housing and replacing the existing rental stock with the cold, massive, impersonal concrete human stockyards we now know as public housing projects — the equivalent of urban hell for severalgenerations of the poor in North America. Not only was poverty not checked by this urban “reform,” but the absence of cheap rooming houses and other lodgings for society’s marginalizedcitizens ultimately created the phenomenon of urban homelessness. And of course, we all know the many wonderful benefits that came with living in comfy, government-subsidized “projects” –rampant drug addiction, vandalism, family breakup, gang wars, killings and social decay.
Oh, and did we mention an even more ingrained “cycle of poverty”?
Grace writes: “What do you think will become of modernity? If, as you say, resistance is futile, then I suppose we all better get used to whatever happens next.”
Hmmmm . . . how to begin . . . It’s not that resistance is futile. It’s that the transformation has already occurred. It’s rather like a Brit in 2005 trying to figure out how to resist the Norman invasion of 1066. It’s already happened; the society is different; the language is different; everything is different. How exactly do you resist?
Look at it this way: if I suggested to you that you didn’t have to choose a career because your place in life was already fixed by family circumstance and gender, you’d look at me like I was from some other planet. If I told you that President Bush was a living god around which our very existence was centered, you’d think I was insane. But these are things that people simply took for granted at one time. Can you imagine any circumstance, short of global apocalypse, under which we could go back to that kind of understanding?
According to Marcel Gauchet, author of _The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion_, what it means is the end of religion. Not that there won’t be churches or “believers,” but that the role of religion in providing a structure for consciousness will end. This is my interpretation of Gauchet anyway. He writes in a virtually impenetrable style, so there’s little point in quoting. To put it in different terms, religion will be a lifestyle choice, a chosen part of self-identity, a personal response to a sense of the infinite. What it won’t be is an organic whole that infuses and informs all aspects of society.
I don’t know if this is making any sense at all. Stop me if this is not helpful . . .
Grace: “I suppose also that though I see your point and may even agree that the cultural force of modernity is far more powerful than the attempts of Christianity, conservatism or anything else to thwart it, it seems unthinkable to do anything less than fight it in any way I can.”
Going out on a limb here, but I think this is what the Islamic fundamentalists are trying to do. Their visible complaints have to do with particular values in the West — sexual freedom, materialism, and so on. But I think the unspoken root of the complaint is a fear of the idea that the individual can *choose*. Once the individual has a choice, the game is over, and a certain kind of inexorable logic eventually prevails. They want to retain a traditional community in which religion is a given — it is simply how people live. Not a lifestyle, not a choice, but an unchangeable mode of being. From a political point of view, we see that as a kind of totalitarianism. I think they see it as ontology, as being.
What I’m trying to do is to understand how religion functions in a modern context. And the modern context is very different from the traditional. As I’ve mentioned here before, in a modern society people who convert to Orthdoxy do so as part of a search for personal identity. (I’m not being critical of that, just stating it as a fact.) That itself is a very modern thing to do. So in many cases adherence to traditional religion is itself a manifestation of modernity. Modernity provides the basic modus operandi; it in itself is neither good nor evil. Within the same context one person chooses Orthodoxy; another person becomes a libertarian.
Grace: “We may not win (or at least for long) and we may be deemed complete fools by those who have already lost the fight, but to lay down arms seems tantamount to spiritual death.”
I don’t know. You may be right. At this point I’m just trying to understand the situation.
Fr. Hans writes: “Radical individualism however, is a relatively new development.”
But it is part of the inexorable logic of all that has passed before.
Fr. Hans: “Itâ��s a logical outgrowth of a world view once informed by Christianity but subsequently desacrilized . . .”
But that’s the whole point! Christianity carried within itself the seeds of desacrilization.
Fr. Hans: “Secularism, by removing the Christian teaching that God is both the source and touchstone of truth, reworks the Christian moral precepts while preserving the Christian moral lexicon.”
I would say that original Christianity offered a *mode of being* in the world. But the view of God as transcendent and other-worldly is what allowed people to view that mode of being as “teachings” and “moral precepts.” Once you have “moral precepts,” individuals are then able to consider these moral precepts AS moral precepts, in isolation from God. It’s kind of like what Alisdair McIntyre says in _After Virtue_ — what existed in ancient Greece as a mode of being eventually became “ethical principles” that were cut off from the mode of being that gave them meaning. Read the first page of _After Virtue_ and you see what I mean.
Fr. Hans: “The truth is that the center of world Christianity is shifting to the third world.”
To the traditional societies, not surprisingly. Think about that.
Fr. Hans: “Secularism is not grounded in the cultural or moral tradition, but is an outgrowth of much later cultural forces. ”
Keep that phrase “inexorable logic” in mind. Or as you expressed it, “logical outgrowth.” The development of secularism is not merely a temporal development, but a logical one as well.
Fr. Hans: “It’s only a return to the deep tradition that can restore the culture and it will take a monumental effort to accomplish this, but one that already begun and has even borne fruit in places.”
You see traditional religion not as a mode of being but as a kind of life saver that people will adopt, if only for the sake of survival. That in itself is a very modern and utilitarian view of traditional religion. My view is that the development of the modern worldview has already rendered traditional religion unworkable. You may be right, but my money is on modernity.
A common metaphor for the “change” we have been undergoing is boiling a frog. Supposedly, if a frog is put into a pot and the temperature increases too fast, the frog wises up and jumps out of the pot. If the temperature rises slowly enough, the frog stays put until it is done.
For me, Jim’s point is that the frog is already fork-ready, despite the fact that many of us want to think it still has some time left.
Augie writes: “For me, Jim’s point is that the frog is already fork-ready, despite the fact that many of us want to think it still has some time left.”
An excellent summary, eloquent in its brevity. The oven was turned on around 2,000 years ago.
No. I see traditional religion as the well spring of meaning, of life actually, the memory of which shapes secular modernity and the utopian wish the vivifies it; and the breath of that wish sustains the secular vision as long as the memory remains. As the memory dims however, secularism will turn into a monster.
Nietsche BTW, predicted this. When Nietsche proclaimed the death of God, he meant the abandonment of God by Christian civilization; an abandonment that in several centuries would cause horrible bloodshed the scale of which the world had never seen. It would start in the twentieth century. He predicted the next century would be even worse.
I’ve read After Virte, McIntyre is right in a way, but the mistake you make is believing that the moral precepts have any proscriptive power apart from religion. They don’t. You are living in the legacy of the belief of others before you, borrowing their moral framework, sincerely perhaps, but not in any way eduring enough to be handed to the next generation.
When a people won’t submit to the judgment of God, they will end up serving the tyrant. The Europeans, short of a return to authentic Christianity, will end up submitting to Islam. In America, it will be something different, but no less tyrannical.
Life without religion is an ontological impossibility. Contemporary secularism believes there can be freedom and morals apart from religion, but this illusion can be maintained only where the memory of Christianity still exists. Extinguish that light, and we will enter a new dark ages, with secularists declaring that darkness is really light. Then we will see Treblinka and the Gulags reemerge. And those who knew the truth but did nothing will weep by the waters of Babylon.
Jim, the biggest mistake you make is believing that Christianity posits only a transcendent God. That again is a cruel distortion made by pagainzed western theology. Orthodoxy has always taught and practiced the reality of God within us, God Incarnate, experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven here and now through the gift of His Body and Blood while at the same time God in His essence remains wholly unknowable. One can walk into any Orthodox Church anywhere in the world and find Him. I did. So can you.
Michael writes: “Jim, the biggest mistake you make is believing that Christianity posits only a transcendent God. That again is a cruel distortion made by pagainzed western theology. Orthodoxy has always taught and practiced the reality of God within us, God Incarnate, experiencing the Kingdom of Heaven here and now through the gift of His Body and Blood while at the same time God in His essence remains wholly unknowable.”
Compare the view of God in Christianity with the view of God in other ancient religions. By “transcendent” I don’t mean inaccessible or unknowable. I mean first that God is removed from the daily operation of the physical world; we no longer have a god who drives the sun through the sky, who makes the seasons, whose anger is experienced through thunder and lightening, and so on. We live in a world that is not inhabited by spirits of mountains, rivers, trees, rocks, and so on. I mean second that we no longer have a god who is embodied in a particular king, nation, or oracle.
In these senses Christianity essentially removed God from the world. God became transcendent in the dictionany sense of the term — being above and independent of the material world.
Michael: “One can walk into any Orthodox Church anywhere in the world and find Him. I did. So can you.”
Yes, that’s the nature of modern religion. It’s an individual thing, a private experience, a personal choice. In some versions of Christianity the private experience of God is taken as the sole authority; in that view the “church” is merely a collection of people who happen to worship together in some building. Thus for many Christians even worship is essentially desacralized.
In the Orthodox and Catholic churches the situation is somewhat different. They really are more primitive, if you will. Tradition — what happened in the past — is vitally important. The church is seen as having authority, the church building itself is perceived as sacred space that houses other sacred objects, and the Eucharist is seen as containing the Real Presence, which happens through a ceremony that in other religions would be described as “magic.”
But Catholic and Orthodox churches still function within the conext of modernity even though they contain elements of the more primitive religions.
By the way, I’ve been to Orthdox churches twice, both times for fall festivals, or whatever they are called. At a Greek Orthodox church a few years ago I had a good sandwich. Just last month at an Antiochian church I had arabic coffee and this spinach and bread thing that was quite good. In both cases I had nice conversations with the priests, and in both cases it seemed that there was absolutely no interest in whether I ever showed up for a church service. The buildings were beautiful, the food was good, and the people were pleasant. But except for the ethnic stuff I didn’t have a sense that these people were tapped into something that I wouldn’t find at any other church.
Jim, Pslam 104/103:
Bless the Lord, O my soul; O Lord my God, Thou art very great; thou art clothed with honor and majesty. Who coverest thyself with the light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind: Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire: Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed forever. Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth. He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. He watereth the hills from his chambers: the earth is satisfied with the fruit of thy works. He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth: And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth manâ??s heart. The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the rocks for the conies. He appointed the moon for seasons: the sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their dens. Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor until the evening. O Lord, how manifold are they works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping, innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, who thou hast made to play therein. These wait all upon Thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. Thou givenst them they gather: thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good. Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to dust. Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. The glory of the Lord shall endure forever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord. Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord. The sun knoweth his going down. Thou makest darkness, and it is night. O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom thou has made them all.
Our daily vespers begins with this psalm. And you have given me renewed reason to attend Vespers whenever I can. It is the best evidence that your premise is wrong. I am not talking about religion, I am talking about faith. I am talking about the realization that the living God not only created everything, but that we are radically dependent upon Him for our very being, for every breath we take. His energies infuse all and through us, by the Grace of His Incarnation, transform everything as part of the salvation He has given us.
Christianity did not remove God as you posit, the Incarnation of our Lord, God, and Savior imbedded God within His Creation in a way and a manner that is beyond understanding. Because of the Incarnation, our Savior’s presence with us in an existential and ontological fact. Only those who do not want to face Him as He walks in the Garden in the the still of the morning do not perceive Him. What I found when I walked in the door of the Orthodox Temple was and is personal, but it is not private, it is not individual, it is not unique to me or really even that much about me. The ethnic food, hosptality and sometimes ethnic prejudice have almost nothing to do with what I am talking about. I am talking about salvation. Salvation, not as some static mentally perceived state, but as an encounter with the Living God, shared with millions of others around the world.
I am trying to talk about communion with our Lord Jesus Christ that links me with all other Orthodox Christians past, present, and future in an unchanging, but ever expanding revelation of God to His creation. It is a communion that all of us Orthodox partake of, knowingly or not. It is the commuion of Christ forged on the Cross and made complete as He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven–fully man and fully God.
We will probably never create a Christian social order that enables that communion to be reflected in every aspect of our life and culture, we donâ??t need to. The community that Christ creates by the gift of His Body and Blood is far more powerful and meaningful. Within that community, modernity is already defeated, we just have to partake.
The cold rationalism inspired by pagan philosphers that invaded western theology, the often blasphemous humanism that came next followed by the desent into Satanic nilism has power over our minds and hearts only if we allow it to. The antidote is simple, yet difficult: repentence, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and most important the sacraments.
Michael writes: “It [the psalm] is the best evidence that your premise is wrong. I am not talking about religion, I am talking about faith. I am talking about the realization that the living God not only created everything, but that we are radically dependent upon Him for our very being, for every breath we take. His energies infuse all and through us, by the Grace of His Incarnation, transform everything as part of the salvation He has given us.”
It is a good psalm, and there are other passages as that I think would support the same point.
Perhaps I have not been clear in what I’m trying to say. First, I would note that the psalm you quote is a piece of pre-Christian poetry, and even it was written after some of the more primitive religions had vanished.
While is it true that God is seen as sustaining the world in a general sense, he is not seen by modern people as sustaining the world in its particular operations. In other words, when the psalm says that God “makes darkness,” no one believes that he personally extinguishes the sun every evening. Were a child to ask his teacher why it gets dark at night, I think most people would expect an answer having something do to with the rotation of the earth rather than with the will of God.
Michael: “Christianity did not remove God as you posit, the Incarnation of our Lord, God, and Savior imbedded God within His Creation in a way and a manner that is beyond understanding. Because of the Incarnation, our Savior’s presence with us in an existential and ontological fact.”
But not a physical fact, I think you would agree. Remember, the definition of transcendence in this context is “independent of the material world.” That’s what I mean.
Michael: “The ethnic food, hosptality and sometimes ethnic prejudice have almost nothing to do with what I am talking about.”
But it has a great deal to do with the issue under discussion. The Orthodox church, and to some extent the Catholic, retains an association with some of the more traditionalist cultures. In these churches we find a conjunction of traditional ethnic communities, emphasis on church tradition, and the presence of buildings and other physical objects that are seen as sacred. I agree that Orthodoxy contains a certain non-modern viewpoint, even as it exists in a modern context.
Michael: “he community that Christ creates by the gift of His Body and Blood is far more powerful and meaningful. Within that community, modernity is already defeated, we just have to partake.”
I have a little problem with the idea either that modernity has been “defeated” or that it has “won.” There’s no combat. In fact, there never was a battle. Modernity, meaning in this context human autonomy, was a natural consequence of the Christian view of God as transcendent (existing apart from the material world). It was that view of God that made human autonomy possible. It was that view of God that made a scientific view of the world outside of God possible. It was that view of God that made a rational approach to art, mathematics, ethics, medicine, and everything else possible. What we see remaining today are merely fragments of a more primitive approach to religion. To call them “fragments” is not to trivialize them or to call into question their veracity or denigrate the spiritual meaning that they have to many people. But fragments they are.