What I am trying to explain in this post; is how it is that so many serious Christians end-up expending so much energy on defending and asserting the most "indefensible" aspects of Christianity (past and present) - to the point that their program of life and society becomes all-but indistinguishable from that of orthodox Judaism or traditional Islam.
In other words; by a series of steps they come to advocate and double-down upon a very hard-line, top-down, hierarchical, patriarchal, law-and-practice based system of society - with little or no space for individuality, freedom, or creativity.
I am also suggesting that - given their baseline assumptions - this convergence of Christianity is extremely difficult to avoid, no matter which particular church or denomination to which that person subscribes.
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Most self-identified Christians are church-obedient; by which I mean that they regard external authority to be primary when it comes to being a Christian; and they further believe that external authority to be rooted either in the structure and practice of an institutional church, and/ or in a church-mandated selection and interpretation of scripture.
Most church-obedient Christians are are a liberal or modern persuasion, that operates in conformity to the prime directives of Left-Liberal values as expressed in the leadership of current "Western" civilization. These are not "serious" Christians, because their primary values are indistinguishable - in practice - from those of atheism and materialism.
A minority of church-obedient Christians are what I am calling traditional-orthodox ("trad-ortho") because they dissent from the mainstream values, and try to adhere to "pre-modern" (conservative, indeed "reactionary") core teachings and practices of their church or denomination.
These trad-ortho Christians are a type of serious Christian.
In effect, a trad-ortho, church-obedient Christian has done a comparison of two systems of belief/ values/ practices etc: one system being that of their favoured church, and the other system being that of the Modern West.
From this historical perspective, and given the integrated and inter-dependent nature of both rival systems; they have (not unreasonably) concluded that the reality of the situation is a case of all-or-nothing.
It is seen as an either-or choice; a choice of one or the other.
And, having decided (quite reasonably) that given this forced-choice between the two alternatives; their evaluation is that the church-system is evidently overall superior to mainstream modern atheist-materialism Leftism.
Consequently; they then feel compelled (from honesty) to affirm the entirety of their version of the trad-orthodox scheme.
This is, I think, more-or-less how it is that the trad-orthodox position comes to converge on an obedience-dominant model; and their hard-line, top-down, hierarchical, patriarchal, law-and-practice based system of society.
When coming into conflict with mainstream atheistic modernism; this way of thinking is pretty-much compelled to deny any value or virtues in the modern critique of trad-orthodox society.
So that trad-orthodox position is compelled to confront modernity on its strongest ground; especially some of the ways in which most modern people spontaneously, and often with a strong conviction, experience and feel most strongly - I mean issues relating superficially to matters of sex and lifestyle; and much more fundamentally to individuality, freedom, and creativity.
In effect; trad-orthodox often end-up expending much of their effort in first defending, then actually asserting, the faults, defects, limitations - and indeed evils - of the churches and denominations of the past.
Because of the nature of modern society and modern people; this situation seems almost unavoidable - at any rate it seems to happen to serious and church-obedient Christians of all kinds: Eastern and Western Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Nonconformist Protestants, Mormons - and all other kinds and flavours.
The more serious the church-obedient Christian, the more extremely this phenomenon is observable.
In practice, this situation seems to be unavoidable; at least so long as the real situation is regarded as one of a forced choice between two integrated and systematic options - both alternatives assuming that ultimate authority is located externally, and therefore that the highest personal virtue is obedience to that authority.
4 comments:
As someone who converted to Catholicism at 19 and is now pushing 40, I felt at the time of my conversion that Christ said yes to the Catholic Church very clearly and in spontaneous prayer. The same thing happened when I was trying to discern whether to marry my wife. The Church provided a roadmap to a place of inner freedom and out of nihilism that was holistic as opposed to just intellectual or emotional. The trad-ortho position is where I eventually arrived, first from an aesthetic draw to the Latin mass, then a conviction that the roadmap out of modernity was clearer in this wing of the Church and that I felt a kinship with the people in this community because of their disgust reaction to the direction of the world, especially during and after COVID. I found that over time, though, my inner prayer life became focused on avoiding sin as a way of coping with existential anxiety. It was necessary to reclaim and acknowledge my inner Christian freedom. I have appreciated your articles as I have gone through this process. The Catholic Church is a great and wise guide out of our present predicament for the individual, but the Holy Spirit has to guide this process. I think that the lives of the Saints and mental prayer are extremely helpful when learning how to have a correct relationship to Church hierarchy and a correct relationship to the Holy Spirit. I'm still trying to figure this out.
I wrote a fairly long comment on this post, a defence of orthodoxy and its limits. I decided against posting it though, as it was really a restatement of other comments I've posted. I think most readers of this blog could anticipate the arguments of "church-obedient" Christians like myself; Chesterton (and others) made them all much better than I could, and most of your readers have probably encountered them already many times.
I don't agree with the theory of a radical evolution in consciousness, I think human nature is static, and this is probably a big part of why I would (respectfully) disagree with you and many of your readers on this.
@HI - It seems clear that many Christians find one or another church to be very valuable in their spiritual life; and many more find a church to be at least helpful.
Anything that helps is thus far good.
My main point is that every Christian needs to locate his *ultimate* discernment in an inner and direct to the divine apprehension of truth, so that he can at least avoid being misled by (what seem to me very obviously) churches that are *nowadays* substantially corrupt, and apparently getting worse.
In fact it seems to me that this is exactly what most serious trad-ortho Christians already do - or else they would not already dissent so substantially from their church's mainstream tendency, such that they have selected a minority (and often persecuted) faction within that church, as the object of their loyalty.
All that is required is an honest acknowledgment that this is what they are actually doing - otherwise, sooner or later, the dishonesty and self-blindness of their position will surely erode it.
@Mal - The developmental change in human nature through time is of the nature of a metaphysical assumption, and ultimately not derived from evidence.
I only came to this conclusion fairly late in life, from reading Owen Barfield, mainly. It is a deep change in some fundamental assumptions, and therefore (for me) not easily or quickly understood, or arrived at.
All I can say is that the development of consciousness is a perfectly rational assumption, and for me it overall makes better sense of much of my knowledge and observations, than the usual idea of a universal and changeless human nature.
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