*
I noticed from the Stats that yesterday this blog broke half a million page views. It is running at somewhat more than 1000 page views per day - which is about double what it was when I began daily blogging.
Probably lame. But then of course I deliberately don't do the things that might increase usage - blogroll, linking, be topical etc. I hope (inter alia) to make this blog a bit of a haven from topicality and commercialism.
(These things seem to work, because whenever I break the rules and write a topical blog with links to high usage sites, I do get a lot more page views recorded. E.g. the recent posting on the death of Eric Hobsbawm, which also mentioned Mencius Moldbug and attracted his fan base.)
But I can't really decide whether 500K PVs is something to be pleased about, or just rather sad - considering the blog has been going on a daily basis for more than a couple of years.
But my impression is that page views bear only a very indirect relation to the health of a blog. I have had unprecedented numbers of views over the past days - but people were merely looking at
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/this-is-your-brain-this-is-your-brain.html
...which seems to have been linked from somewhere. Yet on these same high viewing days I have had very few/zero comments.
And even the number of comments seems a poor guide to measuring the kind of impact I hope for. I had a email from a reader who said that a zero commented blog post had been one of the crucial factors in him becoming a Christian. What more could one ask? An infinitely valuable outcome.
*
Saturday, 13 October 2012
No Practice, no Skills
*
Everything you need to know about the necessary framework for real teaching can briefly be stated. In fact I will briefly state it. Here. Now:
1. Knowledge divides into Material, Ordering, Explanation.
a) Material - or curriculum - the stuff to be transmitted,
b) The Ordering of this material and the rate at which it is covered, and
c) Explanations.
Teaching is the bit concerned primarily with explanations; and secondarily with the order and pace with which material is presented.
Most teachers follow a curriculum which arises elsewhere; but generally require some leeway in order to achieve the primary and secondary objectives.
*
2. Skills.
Skills are obtained in two ways:
i) Practice - which is always and absolutely necessary, and takes a certain amount of time.
ii) Apprenticeship to a Master.
Practice and Apprenticeship...
*
Although Apprenticeship stretches back to the beginnings of human society - apparently we can now no longer afford it. Or something. Anyway, Apprenticeship is virtually never on offer from modern educational systems, but may sometimes be arranged outside the system - if, that is, any space exists outwith the system...
*
So, Practice is now the only basis for developing skills.
*
But Practice involves multiple repetitions of the same activity spread out over time, which is boring and time-consuming; and thus impossible without high motivation or coercion (or both).
And modern mass education is 1. Filled mostly with people of low motivation, and 2. Not allowed to/ does not want to use coercion.
No motivation + no coercion = no Practice = no skills
Therefore, Practice has been eliminated from modern education.
Thus modern education offers zero training in skills.
*
Any real skill needs Practice (repetition over time): learning the piano, learning maths (doing problems), learning to be a doctor ('taking a history' - I did this hundreds of times during my training), learning a sport (in cricket, the best batsmen spend hours per day 'in the nets' repeating particular ways of playing particular shots), learning a foreign language (drill, repetition etc)...
There are no exceptions.
*
If there is no Practice, no skills are being developed.
Therefore, if a course of study does not require the student to go through multiple repetitions of the same activity spread out over time - then there are no skills being developed.
No Practice, no skills: none at all.
*
And it does not matter what the course 'aims and objectives might be', it does not matter what 'skills' may be 'certified' or listed or accredited, it does not matter how long the student was in attendance; the rule always applies: if there was no Practice, then there are no skills.
*
Everything you need to know about the necessary framework for real teaching can briefly be stated. In fact I will briefly state it. Here. Now:
Knowledge and Skills
1. Knowledge divides into Material, Ordering, Explanation.
a) Material - or curriculum - the stuff to be transmitted,
b) The Ordering of this material and the rate at which it is covered, and
c) Explanations.
Teaching is the bit concerned primarily with explanations; and secondarily with the order and pace with which material is presented.
Most teachers follow a curriculum which arises elsewhere; but generally require some leeway in order to achieve the primary and secondary objectives.
*
2. Skills.
Skills are obtained in two ways:
i) Practice - which is always and absolutely necessary, and takes a certain amount of time.
ii) Apprenticeship to a Master.
Practice and Apprenticeship...
*
Although Apprenticeship stretches back to the beginnings of human society - apparently we can now no longer afford it. Or something. Anyway, Apprenticeship is virtually never on offer from modern educational systems, but may sometimes be arranged outside the system - if, that is, any space exists outwith the system...
*
So, Practice is now the only basis for developing skills.
*
But Practice involves multiple repetitions of the same activity spread out over time, which is boring and time-consuming; and thus impossible without high motivation or coercion (or both).
And modern mass education is 1. Filled mostly with people of low motivation, and 2. Not allowed to/ does not want to use coercion.
No motivation + no coercion = no Practice = no skills
Therefore, Practice has been eliminated from modern education.
Thus modern education offers zero training in skills.
*
Any real skill needs Practice (repetition over time): learning the piano, learning maths (doing problems), learning to be a doctor ('taking a history' - I did this hundreds of times during my training), learning a sport (in cricket, the best batsmen spend hours per day 'in the nets' repeating particular ways of playing particular shots), learning a foreign language (drill, repetition etc)...
There are no exceptions.
*
If there is no Practice, no skills are being developed.
Therefore, if a course of study does not require the student to go through multiple repetitions of the same activity spread out over time - then there are no skills being developed.
No Practice, no skills: none at all.
*
And it does not matter what the course 'aims and objectives might be', it does not matter what 'skills' may be 'certified' or listed or accredited, it does not matter how long the student was in attendance; the rule always applies: if there was no Practice, then there are no skills.
*
Friday, 12 October 2012
Is the Christian evolutionist an oxymoron?
*
[Note: An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms - such as painfully comfortable or gorgeously hideous.]
*
Can someone be a real Christian and an evolutionary scientist at one and the same time and without contradiction and without one eroding the other?
Many men of great spiritual authority would say no; and many of much shallower thinking say yes of course.
I am going to disagree with some of the deeper thinkers who would prohibit evolutionary thinking as un-Christian (but my disagreement is specific and dependent upon certain strict conditions); and also disagree with many shallower thinkers who see no problem at all in a Christian being any kind of evolutionist he might want to be.
Natural Selection has been and is a big problem for Christianity; but the essential problems arise from the fact that Natural Selection is science, and to the limitations of any science.
Of course, the problems and controversies of evolution come mostly in application to humans; so I will focus on humans.
*
Firstly, I think there is no significant problem about a Christian being scientifically or professional interested in evolution in the sense of adaptation within the human species
This is, indeed, pretty much common sense. Humans differ, many of these differences are heritable, and some of these heritable differences can be selected either artificially and purposefully, or by differences in the environment, to change human attributes.
In other words, human traits or potentialities can be amplified or suppressed by differential reproduction.
*
For example, resistance to some diseases is greater in some people than others, these differences may be heritable, and after several generations the outcome may be that a human population can become (on average) much more resistant to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (e.g. in the case of Amerindians infected by Europeans), syphilis (e.g. in the case of Europeans infected by Amerindians) or P. falciparum malaria (in the case of many populations in Africa and the Mediterranian).
Humans can likewise by adaptation become (in principle) taller or shorter, stronger or slimmer, more or less intelligent, more or less impulsive, more or less dark or light skinned, retain the ability to digest milk into adult life and so on.
This kind of thing happens, indeed must happen - but of course in specific instances its effect may be weak, slow, or overwhelmed by other causes. So adaptation may, in practice, be real but unimportant, or presumed to be operating but invisible.
*
In other words, in the idea of adaptation by Natural Selection, children tend to resemble their parents more than random other people; and this family transmission can sometimes make a difference to the childrens' chance of themselves having children.
The tricky question comes in relation to the evolution of humans as a 'species'.
This is superficially the question of whether or how humans as a form evolved from non-human things (other forms of animals), and the assertion that this happened wholly by contingent and undirected natural selection acting on genetic (and other) variation.
What Natural Selection assumes is that the process of adaptation can continue, and did continue, to the point of leading to humans in all their essential qualities, without any form of divine intervention (and - logically - that the process is continuing and will continue).
Now, on the face of it, this cannot be acceptable to a Christian as a description of reality - but we need to focus upon what is it exactly that cannot be acceptable to a Christian.
*
What is absolutely unacceptable is to believe that the assumption of zero divine influence is the whole truth of the matter.
In the first place, it is not a discovered truth but instead a built-in assumption.
But if the built-in assumption is (for whatever reason) taken to be the discovered truth, then this would obviously be unacceptable to a Christian, because it directly contradicts Christian revelation in multiple ways, both fundamentally and superficially.
To accept the assumption of zero divine influence in relation to the essential nature of Man as if it were a fact, is indeed to replace Christianity with a mechanistic model that excludes even the possibility of meaning, purpose or any relationship between the individual and reality.
In the model of Natural Selection 'stuff happens' but it is not going anywhere nor for any reason nor nor does anything matter - it is a vision of existence as a process of permanent dynamic flux. Humans are just a passing phase of this flux.
*
(Indeed, since it is itself a human discovery, and since humans are merely temporary creatures, and human ideas merely a product of instincts created by Natural Selection; then any attempt to regard Natural Selection as a fundamental truth or primary reality is incoherent, self-refuting. If Natural Selection is true of everything, then human ideas do not reflect reality but are merely historical, contingent and open-endedly changing products of Natural Selection. Truth could only come from them by chance - and then they would not know it. How could a temporary eddy in the flux understand the flux?)
*
Why is it that so many people repeatedly mistake a built-in assumption for a discovered truth?
Because when so many people are playing the game of assuming that humans must have arisen from something else by pure Natural Selection sans God; everywhere you turn that is what people are doing: every new discovery from genetics, geology, anthropology or climatology is discovered on that assumption and fitted to the assumption; every mathematical model is built on the assumption. Every fossil fragment has been searched for on that basis and slotted into the current assumed lineage.
At no point is the assumption itself discovered, or tested; it remains necessarily untouched by all possible empirical findings.
Consequently, from within this evolutionary thought system, humans are conceptualized - from top to bottom - not only as having arisen by Natural Selection - but as the kind of thing that can arise by Natural Selection.
*
But the actual details of what happened and how it happened to get from non-humans to humans by pure Natural Selection change with bewildering speed - sometimes more than once a year: a single bone sometimes overturns the current fragile consensus.
This rapidity of change and lack of consensus means that this is emphatically not the kind of science which can be relied upon - and indeed it is not relied upon. The story of human evolution by Natural Selection merely functions as a story - more or less interesting according to taste.
It is essentially a matter therefore of popular science - and indeed it always has been. The professionals - whether fossil hunters or gene hunters or whatever - serve merely to generate material for popular science.
*
The current actual description of how Man arose by Natural Selection has been and is always contested, incomplete and self-contradictory, and above all labile - much more like the fluctuations of fashion than like something solidly useful.
Yet nothing about this lability disproves the assumptions of Natural Selection, nor does it have the slightest tendency to disprove the assumptions of Natural Selection; because nothing can disprove an assumption - not even in principle. That is the kind of thing an assumption is.
In a nutshell, natural selection is the understanding of humans that you get when you have assumed no divine influence.
*
But, there is - or certainly there can be - a way of doing evolutionary science in which the assumption of no divine intervention or influence in the 'origin of species' (including the human species) is made, but the fact that this was an assumption (and not a discovery nor a fact) is retained in consciousness.
The assumptions are made, and a game of following-out its assumptions, following its rules, is played.
*
This game of evolutionary science would have no more intrinsic validity than any other intellectual model - and in fact scientists do this kind of thing all the time.
Indeed, in a sense, that is just what science is - the business of making simplified working models (from which most things are left out) to try and deal with the incomprehensible complexity of raw reality.
So, scientists might predict the motion of a projectile assuming that the projectile has no volume, being a specific mass that occupies an infinitely small point, and in a simplified situation where there is gravity (which does not vary with height above the ground) and there is zero friction. The question is not whether this simplified model is true in the sense of real because we know it is not. But whether the prediction is accurate enough to be useful.
Indeed, this is the usual way science is done. The question is not whether the assumptions of science are true - because they are not true, and indeed are often changing very rapidly - but whether the answers obtained from the simplified assumptions are good enough for the purpose in hand.
*
So the validity of evolutionary science applied to the origin of the human species is intrinsically that of an intellectual game - and any real world truth or validity to this game is absolutely dependent upon testing the outcome in respect to the reason for doing the exercise.
We could say that the function of evolutionary science applied to the origin of human species is that of a 'Glass Bead Game'. An elite game (observed by the non-elite, but not played by them) in which the intrinsic intellectual fascination (i.e. the puzzle of constructing evolutionary lineages from partial, imprecise and constantly-changing evidence within the over-arching and strict rule of never introducing divine causes or reasons) is sufficient justification for its practice.
From this point of view, the elite intellectual game of constructing a human evolutionary lineage on the basis of zero divine influence, and purely caused by the selection of undirected variants seems to be, usually is, rather a functionless activity - it is not very clear what the purpose of it might be aside from the most obvious one of generating material for popular science: that is, for the highbrow entertainment industry.
*
Yet, it seems that historically one significant purpose of Natural Selection applies to the origin of the human species seems to have been (sometimes deliberately, sometimes implicitly) its application to replace and destroy Christianity.
Thus many or most prominent anti-Christians and atheists have been evolutionary scientists, right from the beginning of Natural Selection and continuing today.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this may me the underlying function of Natural Selection, and an indirect strategy to replace Christianity. Which would mean that Natural Selection must have a second assumption built into it: the assumption that what is in reality and necessarily a Glass Bead Game, is intrinsically a description of reality.
The covert but crucial assumption of Natural Selection as it is applied in scientific practice and popular science to the origin of the human species, may therefore be that it is not-an-assumption.
*
So, a Christian could legitimately engage in evolutionary thinking abut the origins of Man so long as he recognized the assumptions built into this game, and did not mistake these assumptions for discoveries, and did not attempt to make the outcomes or conclusions of this game into something with any necessary real-world functionality or relevance.
If, that is, he was content to play the game as a game; and not to pretend the game is other than a game.
*
To play the game of evolutionary science is intrinsically no more anti-Christian than to play a game of chess; unless you start to believe that chess is reality.
To believe that evolutionary theory disproves divinity is merely to observe that you don't need God to play chess, but then to infer from this factual observation that there is no God!
*
What happens within this game of evolutionary science has zero necessary relevance outside of the rules of that game - any applications to real life and the Human Condition are merely pragmatic (that is, a matter of usefulness for the task in hand), and each application must specifically be tested and proven - never assumed.
So a Christian Evolutionist could indeed exist, and need not be an oxymoron.
*
[Note: An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms - such as painfully comfortable or gorgeously hideous.]
*
Can someone be a real Christian and an evolutionary scientist at one and the same time and without contradiction and without one eroding the other?
Many men of great spiritual authority would say no; and many of much shallower thinking say yes of course.
I am going to disagree with some of the deeper thinkers who would prohibit evolutionary thinking as un-Christian (but my disagreement is specific and dependent upon certain strict conditions); and also disagree with many shallower thinkers who see no problem at all in a Christian being any kind of evolutionist he might want to be.
Natural Selection has been and is a big problem for Christianity; but the essential problems arise from the fact that Natural Selection is science, and to the limitations of any science.
Of course, the problems and controversies of evolution come mostly in application to humans; so I will focus on humans.
*
Firstly, I think there is no significant problem about a Christian being scientifically or professional interested in evolution in the sense of adaptation within the human species
This is, indeed, pretty much common sense. Humans differ, many of these differences are heritable, and some of these heritable differences can be selected either artificially and purposefully, or by differences in the environment, to change human attributes.
In other words, human traits or potentialities can be amplified or suppressed by differential reproduction.
*
For example, resistance to some diseases is greater in some people than others, these differences may be heritable, and after several generations the outcome may be that a human population can become (on average) much more resistant to infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (e.g. in the case of Amerindians infected by Europeans), syphilis (e.g. in the case of Europeans infected by Amerindians) or P. falciparum malaria (in the case of many populations in Africa and the Mediterranian).
Humans can likewise by adaptation become (in principle) taller or shorter, stronger or slimmer, more or less intelligent, more or less impulsive, more or less dark or light skinned, retain the ability to digest milk into adult life and so on.
This kind of thing happens, indeed must happen - but of course in specific instances its effect may be weak, slow, or overwhelmed by other causes. So adaptation may, in practice, be real but unimportant, or presumed to be operating but invisible.
*
In other words, in the idea of adaptation by Natural Selection, children tend to resemble their parents more than random other people; and this family transmission can sometimes make a difference to the childrens' chance of themselves having children.
The tricky question comes in relation to the evolution of humans as a 'species'.
This is superficially the question of whether or how humans as a form evolved from non-human things (other forms of animals), and the assertion that this happened wholly by contingent and undirected natural selection acting on genetic (and other) variation.
What Natural Selection assumes is that the process of adaptation can continue, and did continue, to the point of leading to humans in all their essential qualities, without any form of divine intervention (and - logically - that the process is continuing and will continue).
Now, on the face of it, this cannot be acceptable to a Christian as a description of reality - but we need to focus upon what is it exactly that cannot be acceptable to a Christian.
*
What is absolutely unacceptable is to believe that the assumption of zero divine influence is the whole truth of the matter.
In the first place, it is not a discovered truth but instead a built-in assumption.
But if the built-in assumption is (for whatever reason) taken to be the discovered truth, then this would obviously be unacceptable to a Christian, because it directly contradicts Christian revelation in multiple ways, both fundamentally and superficially.
To accept the assumption of zero divine influence in relation to the essential nature of Man as if it were a fact, is indeed to replace Christianity with a mechanistic model that excludes even the possibility of meaning, purpose or any relationship between the individual and reality.
In the model of Natural Selection 'stuff happens' but it is not going anywhere nor for any reason nor nor does anything matter - it is a vision of existence as a process of permanent dynamic flux. Humans are just a passing phase of this flux.
*
(Indeed, since it is itself a human discovery, and since humans are merely temporary creatures, and human ideas merely a product of instincts created by Natural Selection; then any attempt to regard Natural Selection as a fundamental truth or primary reality is incoherent, self-refuting. If Natural Selection is true of everything, then human ideas do not reflect reality but are merely historical, contingent and open-endedly changing products of Natural Selection. Truth could only come from them by chance - and then they would not know it. How could a temporary eddy in the flux understand the flux?)
*
Why is it that so many people repeatedly mistake a built-in assumption for a discovered truth?
Because when so many people are playing the game of assuming that humans must have arisen from something else by pure Natural Selection sans God; everywhere you turn that is what people are doing: every new discovery from genetics, geology, anthropology or climatology is discovered on that assumption and fitted to the assumption; every mathematical model is built on the assumption. Every fossil fragment has been searched for on that basis and slotted into the current assumed lineage.
At no point is the assumption itself discovered, or tested; it remains necessarily untouched by all possible empirical findings.
Consequently, from within this evolutionary thought system, humans are conceptualized - from top to bottom - not only as having arisen by Natural Selection - but as the kind of thing that can arise by Natural Selection.
*
But the actual details of what happened and how it happened to get from non-humans to humans by pure Natural Selection change with bewildering speed - sometimes more than once a year: a single bone sometimes overturns the current fragile consensus.
This rapidity of change and lack of consensus means that this is emphatically not the kind of science which can be relied upon - and indeed it is not relied upon. The story of human evolution by Natural Selection merely functions as a story - more or less interesting according to taste.
It is essentially a matter therefore of popular science - and indeed it always has been. The professionals - whether fossil hunters or gene hunters or whatever - serve merely to generate material for popular science.
*
The current actual description of how Man arose by Natural Selection has been and is always contested, incomplete and self-contradictory, and above all labile - much more like the fluctuations of fashion than like something solidly useful.
Yet nothing about this lability disproves the assumptions of Natural Selection, nor does it have the slightest tendency to disprove the assumptions of Natural Selection; because nothing can disprove an assumption - not even in principle. That is the kind of thing an assumption is.
In a nutshell, natural selection is the understanding of humans that you get when you have assumed no divine influence.
*
But, there is - or certainly there can be - a way of doing evolutionary science in which the assumption of no divine intervention or influence in the 'origin of species' (including the human species) is made, but the fact that this was an assumption (and not a discovery nor a fact) is retained in consciousness.
The assumptions are made, and a game of following-out its assumptions, following its rules, is played.
*
This game of evolutionary science would have no more intrinsic validity than any other intellectual model - and in fact scientists do this kind of thing all the time.
Indeed, in a sense, that is just what science is - the business of making simplified working models (from which most things are left out) to try and deal with the incomprehensible complexity of raw reality.
So, scientists might predict the motion of a projectile assuming that the projectile has no volume, being a specific mass that occupies an infinitely small point, and in a simplified situation where there is gravity (which does not vary with height above the ground) and there is zero friction. The question is not whether this simplified model is true in the sense of real because we know it is not. But whether the prediction is accurate enough to be useful.
Indeed, this is the usual way science is done. The question is not whether the assumptions of science are true - because they are not true, and indeed are often changing very rapidly - but whether the answers obtained from the simplified assumptions are good enough for the purpose in hand.
*
So the validity of evolutionary science applied to the origin of the human species is intrinsically that of an intellectual game - and any real world truth or validity to this game is absolutely dependent upon testing the outcome in respect to the reason for doing the exercise.
We could say that the function of evolutionary science applied to the origin of human species is that of a 'Glass Bead Game'. An elite game (observed by the non-elite, but not played by them) in which the intrinsic intellectual fascination (i.e. the puzzle of constructing evolutionary lineages from partial, imprecise and constantly-changing evidence within the over-arching and strict rule of never introducing divine causes or reasons) is sufficient justification for its practice.
From this point of view, the elite intellectual game of constructing a human evolutionary lineage on the basis of zero divine influence, and purely caused by the selection of undirected variants seems to be, usually is, rather a functionless activity - it is not very clear what the purpose of it might be aside from the most obvious one of generating material for popular science: that is, for the highbrow entertainment industry.
*
Yet, it seems that historically one significant purpose of Natural Selection applies to the origin of the human species seems to have been (sometimes deliberately, sometimes implicitly) its application to replace and destroy Christianity.
Thus many or most prominent anti-Christians and atheists have been evolutionary scientists, right from the beginning of Natural Selection and continuing today.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this may me the underlying function of Natural Selection, and an indirect strategy to replace Christianity. Which would mean that Natural Selection must have a second assumption built into it: the assumption that what is in reality and necessarily a Glass Bead Game, is intrinsically a description of reality.
The covert but crucial assumption of Natural Selection as it is applied in scientific practice and popular science to the origin of the human species, may therefore be that it is not-an-assumption.
*
So, a Christian could legitimately engage in evolutionary thinking abut the origins of Man so long as he recognized the assumptions built into this game, and did not mistake these assumptions for discoveries, and did not attempt to make the outcomes or conclusions of this game into something with any necessary real-world functionality or relevance.
If, that is, he was content to play the game as a game; and not to pretend the game is other than a game.
*
To play the game of evolutionary science is intrinsically no more anti-Christian than to play a game of chess; unless you start to believe that chess is reality.
To believe that evolutionary theory disproves divinity is merely to observe that you don't need God to play chess, but then to infer from this factual observation that there is no God!
*
What happens within this game of evolutionary science has zero necessary relevance outside of the rules of that game - any applications to real life and the Human Condition are merely pragmatic (that is, a matter of usefulness for the task in hand), and each application must specifically be tested and proven - never assumed.
So a Christian Evolutionist could indeed exist, and need not be an oxymoron.
*
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Become as little children: accept adoption by God
*
Matthew 18:3 Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
*
One of the most tedious and frustrating things about being an intellectual is that one only comes to the obvious via a tortuous and roundabout route; and what is worse, having seen and rejected the obvious on many previous occasions.
Which is why, for a Great Awakening to occur in the West, I believe that we must become as little children again - cast aside the layers upon layers of pseudo-sophisticated deceptions and distortions which have accreted since childhood; and again perceive things as a child sees them.
*
Thus yesterday I came across, discovered, in a book chapter by J.I Packer (Knowing God, 1973; Chapter 19 'Sons of God) - his great and shattering recovered insight that 'adoption' is the core of Christianity.
http://jameslau88.com/a_christian_is_one_who_has_god_as_his_father.html
*
You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.
In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father.
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.
If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God.
'Father' is the Christian name for God.
[JI Packer, Knowing God, Page 182]
*
The idea is that the highest and greatest Christian 'offer' is not to be forgiven sin by Christ (although this is vital) nor even to be delivered from death; but for me personally to be adopted as a Son of God, to have God as my Father, Jesus as my Brother, and all other Christians as my Brothers - as these things shall be in Heaven.
This is so obvious and 'in your face' that it is explicitly contained in the first lines of the Lord's Prayer - yet somehow I didn't get it.
*
To put it briefly the Old Testament is about the greatness, awefullness, majesty, and Holiness of God; the astonishing good news of the New Testament is that this exact same God has given us the offer of adoptive Sonship - allowed all Christians to join His family.
*
This is of crucial importance to modern evangelism because modern people are post-Pagan and therefore do not believe in the reality of sin, and see no need for forgiveness; and they do not allow themselves to think about death or else regard death as merely a going to sleep forever; so traditional Christian evangelism has nothing to work on.
Yet if there is one psychological problem characteristic of modernity, that problem is alienation: the sense of being isolated, detached from reality, without any personal relationship to the world of people or of nature - thus life as purposeless and meaningless.
What moderns crave above all is to be put back into personal relation with the world: to feel at home in the world.
*
And this is precisely what Christianity offers as its Heaven: to be again at home in the world, at home in the universe, as a loved and loving member of God's family.
To join this family now. And (as with a perfect earthly family) from that point onward never to be rejected from it whatever we do so long as we sincerely repent and try our best.
*
In sum, the family metaphors of Christianity are shown by Packer as both literal and symbolic, simple and profound, irreplaceable, and encompassing the very highest level of the Christian good news.
From this perspective many things become clearer and cohere; not least the deadly significance of that on-going strategic, multi-pronged, sustained and unrelenting assault by the secular Left on the traditional Christian family - not least by the sexual revolution (depicted as liberation from the tyrannical constraints of family).
This has succeeded to the extent that the metaphors of family have been tabooed and subverted such that they have all-but ceased to operate as what they should be: the first and best and most universal way into the Christian message.
*
However, this strategy of evil cannot be wholly effective unless all humans are destroyed; since even those who have never experienced a good family or whose ideas of family have been poisoned by many decades of Leftist propaganda (in fact especially these) nonetheless deeply and ineradicably yearn for real and perfect family and the only basis for human flourishing, and feel cut-off to the extent that they are deprived of it.
Family (like gender) can be attacked only by being defined. To mock, misrepresent, criticize and undermine actually existing, necessarily imperfect and contigent human families in public discourse; therefore serves inadvertently to amplify the private, secret and inextinguishable longing for real, perfect and eternal family.
This, I suggest, is the way into the modern secular mind - pre-armed against almost every other kind of Christian message: the heavenly Christian family as the only sure, complete and permanent cure for alienation; the only way we can feel at home in creation.
*
Matthew 18:3 Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
*
One of the most tedious and frustrating things about being an intellectual is that one only comes to the obvious via a tortuous and roundabout route; and what is worse, having seen and rejected the obvious on many previous occasions.
Which is why, for a Great Awakening to occur in the West, I believe that we must become as little children again - cast aside the layers upon layers of pseudo-sophisticated deceptions and distortions which have accreted since childhood; and again perceive things as a child sees them.
*
Thus yesterday I came across, discovered, in a book chapter by J.I Packer (Knowing God, 1973; Chapter 19 'Sons of God) - his great and shattering recovered insight that 'adoption' is the core of Christianity.
http://jameslau88.com/a_christian_is_one_who_has_god_as_his_father.html
*
You sum up the whole of New Testament teaching in a single phrase, if you speak of it as a revelation of the Fatherhood of the holy Creator.
In the same way, you sum up the whole of New Testament religion if you describe it as the knowledge of God as one’s holy Father.
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.
If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God.
'Father' is the Christian name for God.
[JI Packer, Knowing God, Page 182]
*
The idea is that the highest and greatest Christian 'offer' is not to be forgiven sin by Christ (although this is vital) nor even to be delivered from death; but for me personally to be adopted as a Son of God, to have God as my Father, Jesus as my Brother, and all other Christians as my Brothers - as these things shall be in Heaven.
This is so obvious and 'in your face' that it is explicitly contained in the first lines of the Lord's Prayer - yet somehow I didn't get it.
*
To put it briefly the Old Testament is about the greatness, awefullness, majesty, and Holiness of God; the astonishing good news of the New Testament is that this exact same God has given us the offer of adoptive Sonship - allowed all Christians to join His family.
*
This is of crucial importance to modern evangelism because modern people are post-Pagan and therefore do not believe in the reality of sin, and see no need for forgiveness; and they do not allow themselves to think about death or else regard death as merely a going to sleep forever; so traditional Christian evangelism has nothing to work on.
Yet if there is one psychological problem characteristic of modernity, that problem is alienation: the sense of being isolated, detached from reality, without any personal relationship to the world of people or of nature - thus life as purposeless and meaningless.
What moderns crave above all is to be put back into personal relation with the world: to feel at home in the world.
*
And this is precisely what Christianity offers as its Heaven: to be again at home in the world, at home in the universe, as a loved and loving member of God's family.
To join this family now. And (as with a perfect earthly family) from that point onward never to be rejected from it whatever we do so long as we sincerely repent and try our best.
*
In sum, the family metaphors of Christianity are shown by Packer as both literal and symbolic, simple and profound, irreplaceable, and encompassing the very highest level of the Christian good news.
From this perspective many things become clearer and cohere; not least the deadly significance of that on-going strategic, multi-pronged, sustained and unrelenting assault by the secular Left on the traditional Christian family - not least by the sexual revolution (depicted as liberation from the tyrannical constraints of family).
This has succeeded to the extent that the metaphors of family have been tabooed and subverted such that they have all-but ceased to operate as what they should be: the first and best and most universal way into the Christian message.
*
However, this strategy of evil cannot be wholly effective unless all humans are destroyed; since even those who have never experienced a good family or whose ideas of family have been poisoned by many decades of Leftist propaganda (in fact especially these) nonetheless deeply and ineradicably yearn for real and perfect family and the only basis for human flourishing, and feel cut-off to the extent that they are deprived of it.
Family (like gender) can be attacked only by being defined. To mock, misrepresent, criticize and undermine actually existing, necessarily imperfect and contigent human families in public discourse; therefore serves inadvertently to amplify the private, secret and inextinguishable longing for real, perfect and eternal family.
This, I suggest, is the way into the modern secular mind - pre-armed against almost every other kind of Christian message: the heavenly Christian family as the only sure, complete and permanent cure for alienation; the only way we can feel at home in creation.
*
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
The Adolescent Society - Uganda to the UK
*
The modern world is characterized by Adolescent Societies.
*
In the developing world there are more than 40 nations whose median age is less than 20: these are societies with a majority of adolescents.
The youngest is Uganda - population 36 million, where the average person is 15 years old.
So third world societies nowadays essentially consist of adolescents.
*
In the Western World the average age is more than twice this - in the United Kingdom it is 40, in Japan 45.
These are the oldest societies the world has ever seen - and yet of course these societies are ruled by adolescents.
*
The adolescents who rule the West are the Mass Media: the mass media being the primary social system in the West, the major focus and origin of the dominant ideology of secular Leftism, and a domain almost-exclusively the province of those who are psychological adolescents.
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/psychological-neoteny.html
*
The Western Mass Media is populated by many-mainly young, unmarried people without children who have typical adolescent concerns for cliques, lifestyle, in-group slang and catch phrases, sexual 'liberation', dress codes, scapegoating and self-righteousness.
If they are married, then these marriages are late, unserious, unrestrictive and seldom last.
If they do have children they have one or two max., seldom raise them, often abandon them.
*
Typical of adolescents the mass media displays impulsivity and unstable moods; alternation between hedonism and blaming; between aggression and cowardice; sarcasm and sentimentality; impossible idealism and indignant charges of hypocrisy; wild recklessness and paralyzing guilt; snide arrogance and hero-worship - is obsessed with novelties, fashion and peer approval; is extravert (needing continual external stimulation); and is emotionally cold, selfish and and manipulative while burning with resentments, bursting with personal entitlements, prone to self-pity, and zealous for abstract 'justice' which other people fail to live up to.
*
In sum, almost everyone now alive inhabits a world ruled, one way or another, by adolescents - which explains a lot...
*
The modern world is characterized by Adolescent Societies.
*
In the developing world there are more than 40 nations whose median age is less than 20: these are societies with a majority of adolescents.
The youngest is Uganda - population 36 million, where the average person is 15 years old.
So third world societies nowadays essentially consist of adolescents.
*
In the Western World the average age is more than twice this - in the United Kingdom it is 40, in Japan 45.
These are the oldest societies the world has ever seen - and yet of course these societies are ruled by adolescents.
*
The adolescents who rule the West are the Mass Media: the mass media being the primary social system in the West, the major focus and origin of the dominant ideology of secular Leftism, and a domain almost-exclusively the province of those who are psychological adolescents.
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/ed-boygenius.html
http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/psychological-neoteny.html
*
The Western Mass Media is populated by many-mainly young, unmarried people without children who have typical adolescent concerns for cliques, lifestyle, in-group slang and catch phrases, sexual 'liberation', dress codes, scapegoating and self-righteousness.
If they are married, then these marriages are late, unserious, unrestrictive and seldom last.
If they do have children they have one or two max., seldom raise them, often abandon them.
*
Typical of adolescents the mass media displays impulsivity and unstable moods; alternation between hedonism and blaming; between aggression and cowardice; sarcasm and sentimentality; impossible idealism and indignant charges of hypocrisy; wild recklessness and paralyzing guilt; snide arrogance and hero-worship - is obsessed with novelties, fashion and peer approval; is extravert (needing continual external stimulation); and is emotionally cold, selfish and and manipulative while burning with resentments, bursting with personal entitlements, prone to self-pity, and zealous for abstract 'justice' which other people fail to live up to.
*
In sum, almost everyone now alive inhabits a world ruled, one way or another, by adolescents - which explains a lot...
*
Memory and secular modernity
*
On the one hand, in modern society, all meaning is sustained by memory - our very selves are nothing more than memories.
Because (secular belief has it) when we die, our memories die with us, and once these brain patterns are destroyed, then that is that.
Modern man is thus, to himself, nothing more than his memories; and his memories make him and sustain him. When memory dies, the person dies.
On the other hand, modern man dedicated vast effort to obliterating or ignoring these memories, by intoxication and by imposing alternative realities (from the mass media, art etc).
*
But is memory true perfect and permanent, or not?
For modern man memory is a labile delusion.
Even freshly made memories are grossly partial and necessarily biased; incomplete and distorted.
Memories may be partly or wholly false, subject to change and decay, may be invented or deleted or reshaped...
*
So modern man is nothing but his memory, yet he understands memory as not just contingent and temporary - but fundamentally unreliable.
In sum, memory is conceptualized as being unrelated to reality.
So modern man sees himself as living only on the basis of delusion.
And life for secular modernity is without meaning or purpose and all relation between the person and the rest of the world (if it even exists) is illusory...
*
This is why all coherent metaphysics must be rooted in timeless, unchanging eternity.
And also why there must be some kind of bridge or intermediate zone between the eternal and timeless perspective, and our experienced world of movement, joy, corruption and death.
And yet this intermediate connection will never make full and explicit sense to us - because in our minds the gulf between such utterly dissimilar worlds - the world of permanence and the world of change - is qualitative, utter, unbridgeable.
Thus the ultimate impossibility of philosophy.
*
On the one hand, in modern society, all meaning is sustained by memory - our very selves are nothing more than memories.
Because (secular belief has it) when we die, our memories die with us, and once these brain patterns are destroyed, then that is that.
Modern man is thus, to himself, nothing more than his memories; and his memories make him and sustain him. When memory dies, the person dies.
On the other hand, modern man dedicated vast effort to obliterating or ignoring these memories, by intoxication and by imposing alternative realities (from the mass media, art etc).
*
But is memory true perfect and permanent, or not?
For modern man memory is a labile delusion.
Even freshly made memories are grossly partial and necessarily biased; incomplete and distorted.
Memories may be partly or wholly false, subject to change and decay, may be invented or deleted or reshaped...
*
So modern man is nothing but his memory, yet he understands memory as not just contingent and temporary - but fundamentally unreliable.
In sum, memory is conceptualized as being unrelated to reality.
So modern man sees himself as living only on the basis of delusion.
And life for secular modernity is without meaning or purpose and all relation between the person and the rest of the world (if it even exists) is illusory...
*
This is why all coherent metaphysics must be rooted in timeless, unchanging eternity.
And also why there must be some kind of bridge or intermediate zone between the eternal and timeless perspective, and our experienced world of movement, joy, corruption and death.
And yet this intermediate connection will never make full and explicit sense to us - because in our minds the gulf between such utterly dissimilar worlds - the world of permanence and the world of change - is qualitative, utter, unbridgeable.
Thus the ultimate impossibility of philosophy.
*
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
We have to live here and now. But...
*
In Sodom and Gomorrah - not Constantinople. Yes we do.
Restoration of a Christian society is not a political act. A Christian society first requires Christian people.
Modern Westerners are so secularized that that cannot even understand natural paganism, are confused even about spontaneous Natural Law. Cannot even see what they are looking at.
Modern people cannot sustain a Christian society, could not form a Christian government (even if they wanted to, which they do not).
But... we need to know about the great Saints and Holy people of the past, and about historical devout Christian societies in order to orientate ourselves.
The point to aim at is be remote and unattainable, but having it as a goal does take us in the right direction.
Aiming at anything near-to which is attainable - we will surely go astray.
So where we aim and where we expect to arrive, are two very, very different things.
*
In Sodom and Gomorrah - not Constantinople. Yes we do.
Restoration of a Christian society is not a political act. A Christian society first requires Christian people.
Modern Westerners are so secularized that that cannot even understand natural paganism, are confused even about spontaneous Natural Law. Cannot even see what they are looking at.
Modern people cannot sustain a Christian society, could not form a Christian government (even if they wanted to, which they do not).
But... we need to know about the great Saints and Holy people of the past, and about historical devout Christian societies in order to orientate ourselves.
The point to aim at is be remote and unattainable, but having it as a goal does take us in the right direction.
Aiming at anything near-to which is attainable - we will surely go astray.
So where we aim and where we expect to arrive, are two very, very different things.
*
Modern monasticism - comments on "Finding Sanctuary" by Christopher Jamison OSB
*
I bought this book secondhand, and I don't much like it. I didn't really expect to, since it was written by the Abbot of a Monastery which featured in a reality TV program.
Of course, there is much said that is not objectionable - but I'll just mention three things that annoyed me greatly: one which will probably puzzle other people, the others are more obvious.
*
1. [Page 57] The monastic tradition offers two ways to help us in the silent times: the use of a repeated phrase, and the slow reading of sacred texts...
One favourite phrase of the first monks was: O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.
*
What annoyed me about this was the bathetic, leaden, tin-eared, bureaucratic, anti-rhythmic, translation of the first half of this phrase - 'O God, come to my assistance' - which is intended to be repeated thousands or millions of times.
Yet there is a well-known and wonderful version from the Book of Common Prayer Evensong liturgy which might and should have been used: O God make speed to save us; O Lord make haste to help us - but presumably with the 'us' replaced by 'me'.
Somehow 'O God, come to my assistance' seems to encapsulate everything I hate about the calculatedly evil anti-beauty of so much liberal Christianity.
*
2. [Page 162, with reference to the Atlas Martyrs of Algeria] ...an ultimatum was issued to the Algerian government: free all GIA prisoners or the monks would have their throats slit. In May that threat was carried out and the seven Atlas martyrs joined the growing number of Christians who had given their lives out of love for their Muslim neighbours.
Much could be said about this - but if that had indeed been the reason why these monks gave their lives, then they would not be Christian martyrs. It disturbs me that an Abbot does not understand this, or misrepresents it.
*
[Pages 132-4] the poor in the developing world also seeking refuge. They seek refuge not from consumerism but from poverty and they do so increasingly by emigrating to wealth countries...
These economic migrants... are people seeking economic sanctuary within a global economic system that also leaves the poor in a state of being too busy... the poor are also too busy, though in the case of the poor they are too busy surviving rather than too busy consuming...
The developed word responds by erecting bigger barriers to prevent the migration of the envious poor, worried that they will upset the consumer/ producer society's economic and social coherence.
Until the world's economic system evolves to reduce poverty in the Third World, the migration of the poor is going to increase. How to provide enough sanctuary for rich and poor alike is a personal and social challenge on a global scale...
The community we need to build as part of our sanctuary must embrace the poor outsider - such a vital principle for Benedict - both by working to build a global community where poverty is reduced and by welcoming him into our local community in some way.
*
Ignorant or dishonest; stupid or evil? It's hard to say.
But it goes to show that secular Leftism and the Antichrist is at least as active within some monastery walls as in the mass media from which it originates.
*
I bought this book secondhand, and I don't much like it. I didn't really expect to, since it was written by the Abbot of a Monastery which featured in a reality TV program.
Of course, there is much said that is not objectionable - but I'll just mention three things that annoyed me greatly: one which will probably puzzle other people, the others are more obvious.
*
1. [Page 57] The monastic tradition offers two ways to help us in the silent times: the use of a repeated phrase, and the slow reading of sacred texts...
One favourite phrase of the first monks was: O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.
*
What annoyed me about this was the bathetic, leaden, tin-eared, bureaucratic, anti-rhythmic, translation of the first half of this phrase - 'O God, come to my assistance' - which is intended to be repeated thousands or millions of times.
Yet there is a well-known and wonderful version from the Book of Common Prayer Evensong liturgy which might and should have been used: O God make speed to save us; O Lord make haste to help us - but presumably with the 'us' replaced by 'me'.
Somehow 'O God, come to my assistance' seems to encapsulate everything I hate about the calculatedly evil anti-beauty of so much liberal Christianity.
*
2. [Page 162, with reference to the Atlas Martyrs of Algeria] ...an ultimatum was issued to the Algerian government: free all GIA prisoners or the monks would have their throats slit. In May that threat was carried out and the seven Atlas martyrs joined the growing number of Christians who had given their lives out of love for their Muslim neighbours.
Much could be said about this - but if that had indeed been the reason why these monks gave their lives, then they would not be Christian martyrs. It disturbs me that an Abbot does not understand this, or misrepresents it.
*
[Pages 132-4] the poor in the developing world also seeking refuge. They seek refuge not from consumerism but from poverty and they do so increasingly by emigrating to wealth countries...
These economic migrants... are people seeking economic sanctuary within a global economic system that also leaves the poor in a state of being too busy... the poor are also too busy, though in the case of the poor they are too busy surviving rather than too busy consuming...
The developed word responds by erecting bigger barriers to prevent the migration of the envious poor, worried that they will upset the consumer/ producer society's economic and social coherence.
Until the world's economic system evolves to reduce poverty in the Third World, the migration of the poor is going to increase. How to provide enough sanctuary for rich and poor alike is a personal and social challenge on a global scale...
The community we need to build as part of our sanctuary must embrace the poor outsider - such a vital principle for Benedict - both by working to build a global community where poverty is reduced and by welcoming him into our local community in some way.
*
Ignorant or dishonest; stupid or evil? It's hard to say.
But it goes to show that secular Leftism and the Antichrist is at least as active within some monastery walls as in the mass media from which it originates.
*
Monday, 8 October 2012
Examples of neglected genius?
*
The neglected genius, unrecognized during his lifetime is a standard concept in modern discourse. Yet good examples are exceedingly rare.
(Or unrecognized during her lifetime, since it has been a tenet of feminist theory that there were/ are numerous unrecognized female geniuses. However, I don't think that forty years of feminist - ahem - scholarship has come up with a single new example.)
*
Of course it takes a while, usually a matter of decades, for somebody to become really famous - but the genius who was essentially unknown and disregarded during their lifetime and only emerged after death is pretty rare considering the cultural currency.
In classical music, among the certainly first rate, there is probably only Schubert (the example comes from Karl Popper's autobiography).
In poetry, perhaps Emily Dickinson would count; probably William Blake (although well known for his art work).
But some of the supposed examples, such as Van Gogh or Mozart are simply untrue - Van Gogh was well known (and sold his work) and Mozart extremely famous during their lives - dying in insanity or poverty is not the same as being unknown; and of course when somebody dies young there has not been enough time for their reputation to be consolidated.
*
Reputations rise and fall, of course - and there is dishonest boosting and denigration - but in general geniuses are (or have been) known and recognized by their contemporaries - although not necessarily given pride of place.
Fashionable and powerful figures are always in evidence - e.g. Spohr in classical music seems to have been regarded as first rate in Victorian times while Mozart was neglected for a while (seen as a composer of pleasant trifles - rather as we might regard J.C. or C.P.E Bach).
But while trajectories are various, the specific notion of an obscure and neglected genius who lived a full lifespan in the wilderness and was only recognized by posterity is, in fact, a very rare bird.
*
The neglected genius, unrecognized during his lifetime is a standard concept in modern discourse. Yet good examples are exceedingly rare.
(Or unrecognized during her lifetime, since it has been a tenet of feminist theory that there were/ are numerous unrecognized female geniuses. However, I don't think that forty years of feminist - ahem - scholarship has come up with a single new example.)
*
Of course it takes a while, usually a matter of decades, for somebody to become really famous - but the genius who was essentially unknown and disregarded during their lifetime and only emerged after death is pretty rare considering the cultural currency.
In classical music, among the certainly first rate, there is probably only Schubert (the example comes from Karl Popper's autobiography).
In poetry, perhaps Emily Dickinson would count; probably William Blake (although well known for his art work).
But some of the supposed examples, such as Van Gogh or Mozart are simply untrue - Van Gogh was well known (and sold his work) and Mozart extremely famous during their lives - dying in insanity or poverty is not the same as being unknown; and of course when somebody dies young there has not been enough time for their reputation to be consolidated.
*
Reputations rise and fall, of course - and there is dishonest boosting and denigration - but in general geniuses are (or have been) known and recognized by their contemporaries - although not necessarily given pride of place.
Fashionable and powerful figures are always in evidence - e.g. Spohr in classical music seems to have been regarded as first rate in Victorian times while Mozart was neglected for a while (seen as a composer of pleasant trifles - rather as we might regard J.C. or C.P.E Bach).
But while trajectories are various, the specific notion of an obscure and neglected genius who lived a full lifespan in the wilderness and was only recognized by posterity is, in fact, a very rare bird.
*
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Implications of regarding Byzantine Christianity as the apex
*
As I have said before, I regard the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire as the high point of Christian devoutness in human history - certainly not perfection nor paradise, but the high point - and from this follows certain conclusions which frame quite a large range of other historical matters.
1. The Great Schism, that process around 1000AD when the Western and Eastern churches divided, is seen as a disaster; but especially for the West. From that point Western Christendom has been significantly incomplete and biased (and the East, also, was wounded and diminished). This does not (in my view) at all mean that the Western Church is invalid - but that its capacity for glory has been lessened, it cannot reach the heights of theosis which previously had been possible, nor can the Christian life on earth be as complete as it was in Byzantium.
2. The Reformation was seriously flawed by (in some instances) its explicit denial of so many tenets of the ancient Eastern church - monasticism and the eremitic tradition, iconography, veneration of the Mother of God etc - in other instances these were neglected but not outlawed by reformers. By the standards of those who regard Byzantium as the apex, the Reformation and all its consequential ramifications has been a very clear failure in terms of the level of devotion (the level of theosis) it was able to create and sustain.
3. In politics, the supremacy of Byzantium refutes any doctrine or notion that the institutional division of Church and State is necessary or desirable (although in some circumstances it may be the least bad option). It refutes the supremacy and even desirability of democracy, socialism, libertarianism and a host of other modern fetishes. Indeed, Byzantium demonstrates that such institutions as slavery and eunuchs are not qualitatively outwith the scope of a high Christian civilization. Tough stuff.
4. Byzantium also refutes the idea that a civilization ought to be judged by its achievements in science, literature, the arts, military conquest, economic growth or any other worldly domain - and implies that all of these should be subordinated to the spiritual and next-worldly as the primary and explicit goal of civilization.
5. The history of the world is seen as having been in decline for many centuries - indeed since at least the sack of Constantinople by Latin Christians in 1204, leading up to the end of the Third Rome with the execution of Tsar Martyr Nicholas II in 1917.
(Unless Holy Russia can be revived...) The thread of Christianity in this world has been broken, and its wholeness almost everywhere broken; and all remaining Christian possibilities are intrinsically much limited in scope.
*
This explains why the highest peaks of Holiness seem to be very limited in our era (perhaps no living Saints in Europe, UK or the USA?), and probably this situation cannot be remedied.
Yet limitations in scope and nature do not affect the duty to be a Christian nor the duty to strive for sanctity, nor do they diminish the need for mission and conversion. We are still afforded glimpses of Heaven. But our situation does diminish the fullness and height of what can be attained.
I could go on - but it can be seen from these examples that a Christian spirituality which sees Byzantium as the apex of devoutness on earth will have widespread implications beyond the acknowledgement of a simple historical fact.
*
As I have said before, I regard the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire as the high point of Christian devoutness in human history - certainly not perfection nor paradise, but the high point - and from this follows certain conclusions which frame quite a large range of other historical matters.
1. The Great Schism, that process around 1000AD when the Western and Eastern churches divided, is seen as a disaster; but especially for the West. From that point Western Christendom has been significantly incomplete and biased (and the East, also, was wounded and diminished). This does not (in my view) at all mean that the Western Church is invalid - but that its capacity for glory has been lessened, it cannot reach the heights of theosis which previously had been possible, nor can the Christian life on earth be as complete as it was in Byzantium.
2. The Reformation was seriously flawed by (in some instances) its explicit denial of so many tenets of the ancient Eastern church - monasticism and the eremitic tradition, iconography, veneration of the Mother of God etc - in other instances these were neglected but not outlawed by reformers. By the standards of those who regard Byzantium as the apex, the Reformation and all its consequential ramifications has been a very clear failure in terms of the level of devotion (the level of theosis) it was able to create and sustain.
3. In politics, the supremacy of Byzantium refutes any doctrine or notion that the institutional division of Church and State is necessary or desirable (although in some circumstances it may be the least bad option). It refutes the supremacy and even desirability of democracy, socialism, libertarianism and a host of other modern fetishes. Indeed, Byzantium demonstrates that such institutions as slavery and eunuchs are not qualitatively outwith the scope of a high Christian civilization. Tough stuff.
4. Byzantium also refutes the idea that a civilization ought to be judged by its achievements in science, literature, the arts, military conquest, economic growth or any other worldly domain - and implies that all of these should be subordinated to the spiritual and next-worldly as the primary and explicit goal of civilization.
5. The history of the world is seen as having been in decline for many centuries - indeed since at least the sack of Constantinople by Latin Christians in 1204, leading up to the end of the Third Rome with the execution of Tsar Martyr Nicholas II in 1917.
(Unless Holy Russia can be revived...) The thread of Christianity in this world has been broken, and its wholeness almost everywhere broken; and all remaining Christian possibilities are intrinsically much limited in scope.
*
This explains why the highest peaks of Holiness seem to be very limited in our era (perhaps no living Saints in Europe, UK or the USA?), and probably this situation cannot be remedied.
Yet limitations in scope and nature do not affect the duty to be a Christian nor the duty to strive for sanctity, nor do they diminish the need for mission and conversion. We are still afforded glimpses of Heaven. But our situation does diminish the fullness and height of what can be attained.
I could go on - but it can be seen from these examples that a Christian spirituality which sees Byzantium as the apex of devoutness on earth will have widespread implications beyond the acknowledgement of a simple historical fact.
*
Saturday, 6 October 2012
How might a Mere Christian subculture actually happen
*
In a comment to
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/strategic-dilemma-for-christians-re.html
Commenter 'Imnobody' made the following point: I don't think there can be an unified Christian subculture now. We will have Catholic subcultures, Orthodox subcultures, Calvinist subcultures, etc. After the fallout of the modernity, subcultures will inherit the earth and it will be the time to think about unity. Now, it is time to think about the preservation of the Christian message, regardless the specific denominations.
This seems to be correct in terms of the likely sequence of events.
*
There now seems zero possibility (outside Russia) of any chance of a centrally coordinated Christian resurgence; it is something that will happen, or not happen, at a small scale.
And due not to any kind of positive, formal or intellectual plan; but simply to sheer bloody-minded and absolute refusal to go along with secular Leftism.
*
Discrete, un-unified traditional Christian subcultures may survive mostly due to their intransigence, their resistance, their devoutness.
Then as secular Leftism self-annihilates, and these scattered subcultures remain, will come 'the time to think about unity'.
*
What might happen then would depend upon the choices of the survivors: there may perhaps be a time-limited chance of a real cross-denominational Mere Christian unity; or else a single catholic denomination might emerge (unlikely as this seems); or, unity may be rejected - in which case the denominations (each too small and weak for any to be viable on its own) will probably be picked-off, or decline to extinction, or survive with dhimmi status, or something...
Until the end times.
*
In a comment to
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/strategic-dilemma-for-christians-re.html
Commenter 'Imnobody' made the following point: I don't think there can be an unified Christian subculture now. We will have Catholic subcultures, Orthodox subcultures, Calvinist subcultures, etc. After the fallout of the modernity, subcultures will inherit the earth and it will be the time to think about unity. Now, it is time to think about the preservation of the Christian message, regardless the specific denominations.
This seems to be correct in terms of the likely sequence of events.
*
There now seems zero possibility (outside Russia) of any chance of a centrally coordinated Christian resurgence; it is something that will happen, or not happen, at a small scale.
And due not to any kind of positive, formal or intellectual plan; but simply to sheer bloody-minded and absolute refusal to go along with secular Leftism.
*
Discrete, un-unified traditional Christian subcultures may survive mostly due to their intransigence, their resistance, their devoutness.
Then as secular Leftism self-annihilates, and these scattered subcultures remain, will come 'the time to think about unity'.
*
What might happen then would depend upon the choices of the survivors: there may perhaps be a time-limited chance of a real cross-denominational Mere Christian unity; or else a single catholic denomination might emerge (unlikely as this seems); or, unity may be rejected - in which case the denominations (each too small and weak for any to be viable on its own) will probably be picked-off, or decline to extinction, or survive with dhimmi status, or something...
Until the end times.
*
The quality of imagination
*
It is interesting how imagination works differently for different people, and for the same person at different times or stages in their life.
I am thinking of what comes to mind when one thinks of a place, person, book, event, or even an historical situation - the last one is the most fascinating, since it is such a large and complex things to 'imagine' (say) the life of a Roman on Hadrian's Wall, or the University of Paris at the time of Thomas Aquinas, or Concord Massachusetts when Emerson and Thoreau were neighbours.
*
I personally find that for some things the memory is usually based on a static image, like a photograph; or perhaps more exactly, something rather more like a short segment of video, lasting a few seconds.
So, for the last example of Concord, I have a picture of Emerson's study with its Aeolian Harp; a picture of sitting in the doorway of Thoreau's hut looking out at gentle rain; and a scene of lounging beside a very slow flowing river, in a meadow, on a summer afternoon.
*
But for Constantinople at the height of the Eastern Roman Empire I have something more like a feeling, an emotion experienced here-and-now induced by the imagination of being there.
The actual imagined place is neither a picture, nor a video, but includes a vista of the city in its setting, the impression of light reflected from sea, marble, through windows and from rich colours and gold - set below a solidly blue sky; choral singing and processions with crosses and icons aloft - all bound-up in that kind of entranced yearning which C.S Lewis called joy and the German Romantic called Sehnsucht - but knowingly directed at Heaven.
The specific details of what is imagined are vague, perhaps because they seem more like an inferred explanation of what might serve to induce the emotion, rather than being a causal stimulus of the emotion.
*
It seems, therefore, that the reason that I have such an affinity for Byzantium is precisely due to the strength and quality of this imagination of the time and place.
What I get from it is a sense of what it would, could or might be like to live in a place which I and those around me considered to be a representation of Heaven-on-Earth - yet which always pointed above and beyond itself to the eternal reality of Heaven itself.
*
To be able to imagine this has (it seems to me) done more to sustain and direct my Christian faith than has a great deal of cold reason.
This is, for me, the reality of Byzantium and a pinnacle of earthly Christian life - and the facts concerning abstractions such as political and religious structures, publications and biographies... these seem arbitrary, uncertain and irrelevant by comparison.
*
It is interesting how imagination works differently for different people, and for the same person at different times or stages in their life.
I am thinking of what comes to mind when one thinks of a place, person, book, event, or even an historical situation - the last one is the most fascinating, since it is such a large and complex things to 'imagine' (say) the life of a Roman on Hadrian's Wall, or the University of Paris at the time of Thomas Aquinas, or Concord Massachusetts when Emerson and Thoreau were neighbours.
*
I personally find that for some things the memory is usually based on a static image, like a photograph; or perhaps more exactly, something rather more like a short segment of video, lasting a few seconds.
So, for the last example of Concord, I have a picture of Emerson's study with its Aeolian Harp; a picture of sitting in the doorway of Thoreau's hut looking out at gentle rain; and a scene of lounging beside a very slow flowing river, in a meadow, on a summer afternoon.
*
But for Constantinople at the height of the Eastern Roman Empire I have something more like a feeling, an emotion experienced here-and-now induced by the imagination of being there.
The actual imagined place is neither a picture, nor a video, but includes a vista of the city in its setting, the impression of light reflected from sea, marble, through windows and from rich colours and gold - set below a solidly blue sky; choral singing and processions with crosses and icons aloft - all bound-up in that kind of entranced yearning which C.S Lewis called joy and the German Romantic called Sehnsucht - but knowingly directed at Heaven.
The specific details of what is imagined are vague, perhaps because they seem more like an inferred explanation of what might serve to induce the emotion, rather than being a causal stimulus of the emotion.
*
It seems, therefore, that the reason that I have such an affinity for Byzantium is precisely due to the strength and quality of this imagination of the time and place.
What I get from it is a sense of what it would, could or might be like to live in a place which I and those around me considered to be a representation of Heaven-on-Earth - yet which always pointed above and beyond itself to the eternal reality of Heaven itself.
*
To be able to imagine this has (it seems to me) done more to sustain and direct my Christian faith than has a great deal of cold reason.
This is, for me, the reality of Byzantium and a pinnacle of earthly Christian life - and the facts concerning abstractions such as political and religious structures, publications and biographies... these seem arbitrary, uncertain and irrelevant by comparison.
*
Friday, 5 October 2012
Is the lack of modern geniuses because there are no big things left to discover?
*
One of the most frequent arguments about the lack of modern geniuses hinges around the assertion that it was easier for geniuses of the past to make a mark and influence history, because there were so many 'low hanging fruit' - major discoveries just hovering there waiting to be plucked.
But nowadays, so the story goes, the early, easy, major discoveries have already been made; what now remains to be discovered is both harder and more minor - so that a modern person of equal genius to a famous figure of the past appears to make a lesser contribution.
*
Such an argument seems to assume what is false - that the quantity of human geniuses is constant in all times and places and among all people.
Nonetheless, let us assume it is correct: what then?
*
The importance of genius in human history - and specifically in modern society - is that the major discoveries (the breakthoughs) are so great and so fundamental that they enable a new wave of 'growth' to be built upon them.
But if we have actually (as the above argument asserts) run out of major discoveries to make; then the growth which depends on major discoveries will come to an end.
And since modernity depends on growth - specifically growth in capability and efficiency of productivity - then modernity will halt, then reverse.
*
So, the end of genius means the end of modernity; whether the cause is that we have run out of geniuses, or because we have run out of major things for geniuses to discover.
Either way, the consequences are the same.
*
One of the most frequent arguments about the lack of modern geniuses hinges around the assertion that it was easier for geniuses of the past to make a mark and influence history, because there were so many 'low hanging fruit' - major discoveries just hovering there waiting to be plucked.
But nowadays, so the story goes, the early, easy, major discoveries have already been made; what now remains to be discovered is both harder and more minor - so that a modern person of equal genius to a famous figure of the past appears to make a lesser contribution.
*
Such an argument seems to assume what is false - that the quantity of human geniuses is constant in all times and places and among all people.
Nonetheless, let us assume it is correct: what then?
*
The importance of genius in human history - and specifically in modern society - is that the major discoveries (the breakthoughs) are so great and so fundamental that they enable a new wave of 'growth' to be built upon them.
But if we have actually (as the above argument asserts) run out of major discoveries to make; then the growth which depends on major discoveries will come to an end.
And since modernity depends on growth - specifically growth in capability and efficiency of productivity - then modernity will halt, then reverse.
*
So, the end of genius means the end of modernity; whether the cause is that we have run out of geniuses, or because we have run out of major things for geniuses to discover.
Either way, the consequences are the same.
*
Strategic dilemma for Christians: re-conquest or subculture
*
The situation for Christianity in the West is that - at least according to worldly calculations and in terms that can be used in the public arena - the remaining Christians are too few and too weak (and too hated and despised) - and too dispersed - to win the culture war.
We have lost the culture war; yet of course there is no question of surrender.
We will continue to fight, although we have lost.
*
So what does it actually mean for Christians to continue to fight the culture war?
What does 'fighting' entail?
What would need to happen?
*
The two basic strategies are (I think) re-conquest or subculture.
Re-conquest is the normal way in which such matters are discussed. The idea that although we are weak and getting weaker, we should try to re-take the cultural strongholds: government, public administration, education, law, and that centre of Leftism: the mass media.
This entails continued engagement in the public arena - elections (despite that democracy is anti-Christian in tendency), the media space (despite that the mass media is essentially a phenomenon destructive of Christianity), public administration (despite that bureaucracy is anti-Christian)... and so on.
*
The point is that this plan of re-conquest involves Christians fighting on enemy ground using the enemies' weapons.
Under such circumstances, can we actually remain Christian?
Yes - if we are strong in faith. But are we strong?
And if we are not yet strong in faith, how can we possibly get to be strong in face of apparently overwhelming and all-but pervasive force and propaganda from secular Leftism?
*
The other alternative is for Christians to build and strengthen the Christian subculture. To develop alternative institutions.
Not to re-conquer Western culture, but not to comply with culture - to live (as much as can be managed) in a subculture.
Of course, this kind of thing has been going on in the West for centuries, with small, exclusive and geographically-compact groups (but typically mutually hostile); however, can it be done for multiple small, linked, dispersed groups who fight on the same side because linked by Mere Christianity, but not institutionally-united by denominational membership?
That, at any rate, is what would need to happen.
*
Such subcultural places already exist in the media (this is one of them); but would also need to exist in schools and colleges, and so on.
A point to remember is that the aimed-at autonomy is spiritual - this is primarily a subculture of faith; and material autonomy is needed only to the extent that it supports spiritual autonomy.
I think it is probably necessary that any such subculture would be based around geographically-concentrated denominations; and that Christians would need to relocate to create such concentrations where they do not already exist.
*
But no single denomination is strong enough to make the subculture; so the possibility hinges on coalitions or alliances between denominations.
Could a focus of Roman Catholics in one place ally with a focus of Baptists in another place and Orthodox in a third place? To make a Christian sub-culture that was strong in its parts and strong enough in its unity to fight the war and not fight each other?
That, at any rate, is what would need to happen.
*
The situation for Christianity in the West is that - at least according to worldly calculations and in terms that can be used in the public arena - the remaining Christians are too few and too weak (and too hated and despised) - and too dispersed - to win the culture war.
We have lost the culture war; yet of course there is no question of surrender.
We will continue to fight, although we have lost.
*
So what does it actually mean for Christians to continue to fight the culture war?
What does 'fighting' entail?
What would need to happen?
*
The two basic strategies are (I think) re-conquest or subculture.
Re-conquest is the normal way in which such matters are discussed. The idea that although we are weak and getting weaker, we should try to re-take the cultural strongholds: government, public administration, education, law, and that centre of Leftism: the mass media.
This entails continued engagement in the public arena - elections (despite that democracy is anti-Christian in tendency), the media space (despite that the mass media is essentially a phenomenon destructive of Christianity), public administration (despite that bureaucracy is anti-Christian)... and so on.
*
The point is that this plan of re-conquest involves Christians fighting on enemy ground using the enemies' weapons.
Under such circumstances, can we actually remain Christian?
Yes - if we are strong in faith. But are we strong?
And if we are not yet strong in faith, how can we possibly get to be strong in face of apparently overwhelming and all-but pervasive force and propaganda from secular Leftism?
*
The other alternative is for Christians to build and strengthen the Christian subculture. To develop alternative institutions.
Not to re-conquer Western culture, but not to comply with culture - to live (as much as can be managed) in a subculture.
Of course, this kind of thing has been going on in the West for centuries, with small, exclusive and geographically-compact groups (but typically mutually hostile); however, can it be done for multiple small, linked, dispersed groups who fight on the same side because linked by Mere Christianity, but not institutionally-united by denominational membership?
That, at any rate, is what would need to happen.
*
Such subcultural places already exist in the media (this is one of them); but would also need to exist in schools and colleges, and so on.
A point to remember is that the aimed-at autonomy is spiritual - this is primarily a subculture of faith; and material autonomy is needed only to the extent that it supports spiritual autonomy.
I think it is probably necessary that any such subculture would be based around geographically-concentrated denominations; and that Christians would need to relocate to create such concentrations where they do not already exist.
*
But no single denomination is strong enough to make the subculture; so the possibility hinges on coalitions or alliances between denominations.
Could a focus of Roman Catholics in one place ally with a focus of Baptists in another place and Orthodox in a third place? To make a Christian sub-culture that was strong in its parts and strong enough in its unity to fight the war and not fight each other?
That, at any rate, is what would need to happen.
*
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Preparing for suffering - Richard Wurmbrand
*
Richard
Wurmbrand (1909-2001) was a Jewish convert to first Anglican then Lutheran Christianity in Romania where he was
imprisoned and tortured for many years by the Communist regime.
He
left behind some invaluable words of advice for Christians
contemplating a dark future - you need to read the whole thing.
http://www.shilohouse.org/wurmbrand.htm
*
PREPARING FOR SUFFERING
Suffering cannot be avoided in the Underground Church, whatever measures are taken, but suffering should be reduced to the minimum.
What happens in a country when oppressive powers take over? In some countries the terror starts at once, as in Mozambique and Cambodia. In other places religious liberty follows as never before.
And so it begins. Some regimes come to power without having real power. They do not have the people on their side. They have not necessarily organized their police and their staff of the army yet.
*
In Russia, the Communists gave immediately great liberty to the Protestants in order to destroy the Orthodox. When they had destroyed the Orthodox, the turn came for the Protestants.
The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting their men in leadership. They find out the weaknesses of pastors. Some might be ambitious men; some might be entrapped with the love of money. Another might have a hidden sin somewhere, wherewith he may be blackmailed. They explain that they would make it known and thus put their men in leadership.
Then, at a certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison...
*
In a free country, to be a member of a church, it is enough to believe and to be baptized. In the Church underground it is not enough to be a member in it. You can be baptized and you can believe, but you will not be a member of the Underground Church unless you know how to suffer.
You might have the mightiest faith in the world, but if you are not prepared to suffer, then when you are taken by the police, you will get two slaps and you will declare anything.
So the preparation for suffering is one of the essentials of the preparation of underground work.
*
A Christian does not panic if he is put in prison. For the rank and file believer, prison is a new place to witness for Christ. For a pastor, prison is a new parish. It is a parish with no great income but with great opportunities for work...
*
So do not fear prison.
Look upon it as just a new assignment given by God.
*
I am very grateful to Dale Nelson for pointing me at this essay, which made a big impact on me, and which I find keeps coming to mind.
I think one reason I find it especially encouraging is that Wurmbrand was a convert, and into a Christian denomination which was not large or dominant in his country.
This somehow makes his example seem more remarkable and relevant for the likes of myself, compared with those who have been raised from birth in their national faith.
*
Conversion and breeding
*
A religion can grow by gaining converts, and by breeding - large families and retaining the children.
All religions begin by converting, but many continue by breeding.
In a sense therefore, the natural and normal patterns is for a child to be born into and educated into a religion; and the Western Christian phenomenon of multiple individual adult (or teen) conversions is strange.
*
Worldwide Christianity has become a converting but not breeding religion mostly due to voluntary reproductive suppression, but also the loss of children and young adults from the faith.
Western Christianity shows this especially sharply; and the effects of the ageing population in the West is even more marked in the aged congregations of many Christian churches.
Indeed, the situation has gone so far in some denominations and congregations that a new wave of conversions among teens and young adults seems to be the only possibility for survival, since the churchgoers are nearly all above reproductive age.
*
Yet to gain conversions among this teen and young adult age group - who are the most thoroughly corrupted by modernity - is an extremely difficult task, requiring organized effort as well as multiple attributes and skills.
Nonetheless, this is what needs to be done - and it is needed more urgently and comprehensively with every passing year.
My impression is that evangelicals are the only Christian group who are tackling this job with genuine purpose, and they have been succeeding for some decades. Yet the evangelical style does not suit everybody, and there is scope for much more work from other denominations.
*
If Christian churches were to put an end to their useless or harmful political activities (e.g. environmentalism, African aid, Leftist agitation) and redirect their effort into winning and retaining converts, this could be a tremendous gain.
Such decisions are, of course, the role of church leaders. And the fact that they do not focus their efforts on effective mission work, but instead do the opposite; and that they placidly watch the church aging and dying-off; is strong de facto evidence that significant numbers of Christian church leaders are actively hostile to their churches.
This is not merely idleness, careerism or indifference - but covert active sabotage.
And needs to be recognized as such, if it is to be stopped - before it really is too late.
*
A religion can grow by gaining converts, and by breeding - large families and retaining the children.
All religions begin by converting, but many continue by breeding.
In a sense therefore, the natural and normal patterns is for a child to be born into and educated into a religion; and the Western Christian phenomenon of multiple individual adult (or teen) conversions is strange.
*
Worldwide Christianity has become a converting but not breeding religion mostly due to voluntary reproductive suppression, but also the loss of children and young adults from the faith.
Western Christianity shows this especially sharply; and the effects of the ageing population in the West is even more marked in the aged congregations of many Christian churches.
Indeed, the situation has gone so far in some denominations and congregations that a new wave of conversions among teens and young adults seems to be the only possibility for survival, since the churchgoers are nearly all above reproductive age.
*
Yet to gain conversions among this teen and young adult age group - who are the most thoroughly corrupted by modernity - is an extremely difficult task, requiring organized effort as well as multiple attributes and skills.
Nonetheless, this is what needs to be done - and it is needed more urgently and comprehensively with every passing year.
My impression is that evangelicals are the only Christian group who are tackling this job with genuine purpose, and they have been succeeding for some decades. Yet the evangelical style does not suit everybody, and there is scope for much more work from other denominations.
*
If Christian churches were to put an end to their useless or harmful political activities (e.g. environmentalism, African aid, Leftist agitation) and redirect their effort into winning and retaining converts, this could be a tremendous gain.
Such decisions are, of course, the role of church leaders. And the fact that they do not focus their efforts on effective mission work, but instead do the opposite; and that they placidly watch the church aging and dying-off; is strong de facto evidence that significant numbers of Christian church leaders are actively hostile to their churches.
This is not merely idleness, careerism or indifference - but covert active sabotage.
And needs to be recognized as such, if it is to be stopped - before it really is too late.
*
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
A Moldbug moment - Eric Hobsbawm's eulogies
*
I had a (Mencius) Moldbug moment today when reading a sample of the screeds of fawning admiration expressed in obituaries to the recently dead historian Eric Hobsbawm.
If you want to see what the ruling intellectual elite really think, then you should look at some of this stuff, and survey the list of honours and establishment accolades to this chap.
The lack of any concept of evil in a post-Christian society has seldom been so obviously on display.
EH was the epitome of an evil intellectual: evil in motivation and in influence, and on an epic scale - yet of course the mass media stopped everything to heap his bier with praise.
All this is a no brainer - but it is worth seeing how advanced and effective has become the secular Leftist technique of 'framing'; such that truly massive accomplishments of evil are re-packaged and re-presented as saint-like virtue.
Black is white, up is down, 2 + 2 = 5...
*
I had a (Mencius) Moldbug moment today when reading a sample of the screeds of fawning admiration expressed in obituaries to the recently dead historian Eric Hobsbawm.
If you want to see what the ruling intellectual elite really think, then you should look at some of this stuff, and survey the list of honours and establishment accolades to this chap.
The lack of any concept of evil in a post-Christian society has seldom been so obviously on display.
EH was the epitome of an evil intellectual: evil in motivation and in influence, and on an epic scale - yet of course the mass media stopped everything to heap his bier with praise.
All this is a no brainer - but it is worth seeing how advanced and effective has become the secular Leftist technique of 'framing'; such that truly massive accomplishments of evil are re-packaged and re-presented as saint-like virtue.
Black is white, up is down, 2 + 2 = 5...
*
Mel versus the Mormons: depicting Christ
*
I have watched Mel Gibson's movie Passion of the Christ, and also quite a few segments of Mormon movies about the life of Jesus that are available on the lds.org website.
Both are good, both are sincere, both are worth watching.
However, there is an interesting difference between these depictions, which goes in the opposite direction from the theological traditions of these denominations.
*
Gibson's movie is a high production value, high impact affair of ultra-realism and aimed at an elite audience; in which the humanity of Christ is extremely prominent and the scenes of torture were almost unbearable for me to watch.
The Mormon movies are much more modest affairs aimed at educating and edifying a middle- to low-brow audience, with what my daughter would describe as 'dodgy' special effects; and a tone which would strike the arts cinema aficionado as kitsch, if not downright cheesy...
Yet, of course, regular readers will not be surprised to hear that although I admired Gibson's achievement; I prefer the Mormon movies!
*
The reason is that I personally have no problem at all in imagining and visualizing the horrors of torture and the sufferings of Christ as man, and no particular desire to watch this kind of thing - thank you very much...
But I do have some difficulty in imagining the divinity of Christ as God - and this came through very strongly in the Mormon movie clips; by deployment of a more formalized and symbolic (less naturalistic) style of acting and mise en scene; and by tricks such as lighting Jesus with a sort of glow and having a soothing kind of background music.
Yet of course Catholic theology (which underlies Gibson's movie) is far more mystical and Abstract than Mormon theology which is very concrete and literal.
*
So it seems that the Catholic starts from high abstraction and brings Christ 'down to earth' in depictions of literal realism; while the concrete Mormon starts from a very solid, flesh and blood Christ who is elevated by the movie techniques and style making into a divinely illumined figure.
On the whole, in the kind of prosaic world in which we live, I think there is more need for the Mormon approach to depicting Christ as if lit from within, and with a dignity and nobility of which modern lives are all-but empty.
*
I have watched Mel Gibson's movie Passion of the Christ, and also quite a few segments of Mormon movies about the life of Jesus that are available on the lds.org website.
Both are good, both are sincere, both are worth watching.
However, there is an interesting difference between these depictions, which goes in the opposite direction from the theological traditions of these denominations.
*
Gibson's movie is a high production value, high impact affair of ultra-realism and aimed at an elite audience; in which the humanity of Christ is extremely prominent and the scenes of torture were almost unbearable for me to watch.
The Mormon movies are much more modest affairs aimed at educating and edifying a middle- to low-brow audience, with what my daughter would describe as 'dodgy' special effects; and a tone which would strike the arts cinema aficionado as kitsch, if not downright cheesy...
Yet, of course, regular readers will not be surprised to hear that although I admired Gibson's achievement; I prefer the Mormon movies!
*
The reason is that I personally have no problem at all in imagining and visualizing the horrors of torture and the sufferings of Christ as man, and no particular desire to watch this kind of thing - thank you very much...
But I do have some difficulty in imagining the divinity of Christ as God - and this came through very strongly in the Mormon movie clips; by deployment of a more formalized and symbolic (less naturalistic) style of acting and mise en scene; and by tricks such as lighting Jesus with a sort of glow and having a soothing kind of background music.
Yet of course Catholic theology (which underlies Gibson's movie) is far more mystical and Abstract than Mormon theology which is very concrete and literal.
*
So it seems that the Catholic starts from high abstraction and brings Christ 'down to earth' in depictions of literal realism; while the concrete Mormon starts from a very solid, flesh and blood Christ who is elevated by the movie techniques and style making into a divinely illumined figure.
On the whole, in the kind of prosaic world in which we live, I think there is more need for the Mormon approach to depicting Christ as if lit from within, and with a dignity and nobility of which modern lives are all-but empty.
*
More Thos Tomkins
*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaYRQcuBhME
Woe is me by Thomas Tomkins sung by I Fagiolini
*
There are some composers whose music, in some way, fills me with that yearning which C.S Lewis characterized as Joy. An example is Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656).
Tomkins is not recognized as being among the Great Composers, this is probably not even a Great Piece of Music, and indeed I am not widely knowledgeable about TT's work.
I just recognize about some of the harmonic shifts here, a quality that is for me both like coming home and like glimpsing Heaven.
*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaYRQcuBhME
Woe is me by Thomas Tomkins sung by I Fagiolini
*
There are some composers whose music, in some way, fills me with that yearning which C.S Lewis characterized as Joy. An example is Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656).
Tomkins is not recognized as being among the Great Composers, this is probably not even a Great Piece of Music, and indeed I am not widely knowledgeable about TT's work.
I just recognize about some of the harmonic shifts here, a quality that is for me both like coming home and like glimpsing Heaven.
*
Heresy and Authority
*
Modern Christians, in our weakness and dispersion, need to be more careful than ever about heresy: and this means steering a path between the false negative of failing to reject 'liberal' and worldly heresies; and the false positive of falsely detecting heresy and rejecting real Christians of other denominations.
Consider some of the Christian authorities I have been reading with intensity over the past year or two, in no particular order. By 'authorities' I mean that I personally regard them as authorities:
Fr Seraphim Rose
C.S Lewis
JRR Tolkien
Blaise Pascal
St John Maximovitch
Archbishop Averky
Fr Herbert Kelly
Charles Williams
Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
Thomas Traherne
Peter Kreeft
The author of The Way of a Pilgrim
Plus of course The Book of Common Prayer (Thomas Cranmer, Miles Coverdale) and The Bible specifically in the Authorized Version (William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, Lancelot Andrewes etc).
*
The fact is that some of these Authorities would have regarded some of the others as heretics; and would have wanted nothing to do with them, demanded their conversion, or their suppression.
Fr Seraphim Rose - Russian Orthodox
C.S Lewis - Anglican, moving from Low to High Church
JRR Tolkien - Roman Catholic, very traditional
Blaise Pascal - Roman Catholic, but Jansenist = explicitly 'heretical'
St John Maximovitch - Russian Orthodox
Archbishop Averky - Russian Orthodox
Fr Herbert Kelly - Anglo-Catholic monk
Charles Williams - Anglican, mainly Anglo Catholic
Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky - Russian Orthodox
Thomas Traherne - Anglican mainstream of 17th century
Peter Kreeft - Roman Catholic, pre Vatican II tending
The author of The Way of a Pilgrim - Russian Orthodox
*
But I align with C.S Lewis in this matter.
There are real Christian heresies; but there have also been intense inter-denominational disagreements and conflicts within Christianity about matters that we now perceive not to be concerned with heresies.
Sometimes these differences may damage the probability of salvation (for an individual person, or for an average group), or the scope of theosis (sanctification) - but they are not heresies.
*
So, I would personally regard the Reformed churches rejection of monasticism as diminishing the scope of theosis, and I would regard the rejection of veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary as making Christianity harder for the average Christian - but neither of these would amount to heresies.
I would regard some recent Roman Catholic dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility as excessively legalistic attempts at doctrinal precision and political control; but I would not regard them as heresies.
*
One of the very few places in his entire ouvre where Lewis displays principled anger is in a letter when he begs Lewis's friend the (then) Benedictine monk Dom Bede Griffiths to please stop trying convert him to Roman Catholicism - and outlaws that topic of conversation.
For Lewis, this behaviour from Griffiths was implicitly based on the assumption that Anglicans were outwith the legitimate bounds of Christianity; hence a denial of 'Mere Christianity' and an act of denominational exclusivism.
*
Although he began as mainly a Low Church Protestant Anglican, and ended-up much more of an Anglo Catholic, Lewis personally seems never to have considered converting to a different Christian denomination (of course he might well have changed his mind later, if he had lived another 25 years - e.g Walter Hooper has argued cogently that Lewis would probably have become a Roman Catholic).
I think Lewis regarded deliberate efforts in this direction of inter-denominational 'poaching' as not just misguided but likely to be dangerous and damaging to Christian unity and therefore to the mystical Church.
(Of course, behind this attitude of Lewis's lies his belief that there is indeed a real and specifically Christian unity across denominations; which is something atht not all of the above authorities would have agreed upon.)
*
On the other hand, Lewis seems not to have objected to people changing denominations, so long as this was:
1. Done for properly Christian reasons, and
2. Did not lead to denigration of the previous denomination.
*
Yet at the level of dogmas, doctrines, liturgies, beliefs, devotional practices, use of Scripture, structure of authority and innumerable other denominational definitions - there is ample reason for mutual accusations of heresy among my authorities listed above; and for each of them ample reasons for exclusivism.
While, on the other hand, the definition of Mere Christianity which unites all these authorities is so simple and basic as to be insufficient as a basis for a Christian life.
*
It seems, therefore, from the Mere Christianity perspective I share with Lewis:
1. That we must have Christian denominations (because the Mere Christianity that is shared between all denominations is insufficient for a Christian life)
2. Yet none of the Christian denominations are exclusively correct.
3. So that each denomination has advantages and disadvantages for particular persons and on average, and in particular circumstances. For a specific person, group, time or place; the choice of denomination may be critical to their Christian life. So denomination does matter - but not in a fashion related to heresy.
4. Mere Christians should strive neither to encourage nor discourage, but instead to play-down the significance of inter-denominational conversions.
5. Once a denomination is Christian, comes within Mere Christianity, we should try to avoid discussions - and especially debates - about heresy. This line of argument should be reserved for those few core matters that must be shared by all Christians.
6. Denominations should be free to manage their internal affairs, and be strong in their distinctive perspectives and emphasis; but without recourse to building internal denominational unity through hatred of or differentiation from other Christian denominations. Denominational unity should be defined against 'the world', and against non-Christian religions; but not against other Christian denominations.
7. There should be no attempt to fuse denominations, since this leads to dilution and weakness and provokes resentment and schism; nor to make formal organizational agreements and declarations - these tend to be bureaucratic and to encourage careerist thinking about Christianity; remembering true Christian unity is mystical, not institutional.
8. Thus the relationship between denominations should therefore resemble the relationship between autonomous nations allied in a war; and the warfare metaphor clarifies why Christian denominations must be allies, and must not engage in mutual denunciation, since they are confronted by an enemy who would destroy them all.
Once it has been determined on which side a denomination is fighting in the great spiritual war - and in that war there are only two sides - then all other considerations should be subordinated to that crucial fact.
*
Modern Christians, in our weakness and dispersion, need to be more careful than ever about heresy: and this means steering a path between the false negative of failing to reject 'liberal' and worldly heresies; and the false positive of falsely detecting heresy and rejecting real Christians of other denominations.
Consider some of the Christian authorities I have been reading with intensity over the past year or two, in no particular order. By 'authorities' I mean that I personally regard them as authorities:
Fr Seraphim Rose
C.S Lewis
JRR Tolkien
Blaise Pascal
St John Maximovitch
Archbishop Averky
Fr Herbert Kelly
Charles Williams
Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky
Thomas Traherne
Peter Kreeft
The author of The Way of a Pilgrim
Plus of course The Book of Common Prayer (Thomas Cranmer, Miles Coverdale) and The Bible specifically in the Authorized Version (William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, Lancelot Andrewes etc).
*
The fact is that some of these Authorities would have regarded some of the others as heretics; and would have wanted nothing to do with them, demanded their conversion, or their suppression.
Fr Seraphim Rose - Russian Orthodox
C.S Lewis - Anglican, moving from Low to High Church
JRR Tolkien - Roman Catholic, very traditional
Blaise Pascal - Roman Catholic, but Jansenist = explicitly 'heretical'
St John Maximovitch - Russian Orthodox
Archbishop Averky - Russian Orthodox
Fr Herbert Kelly - Anglo-Catholic monk
Charles Williams - Anglican, mainly Anglo Catholic
Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky - Russian Orthodox
Thomas Traherne - Anglican mainstream of 17th century
Peter Kreeft - Roman Catholic, pre Vatican II tending
The author of The Way of a Pilgrim - Russian Orthodox
*
But I align with C.S Lewis in this matter.
There are real Christian heresies; but there have also been intense inter-denominational disagreements and conflicts within Christianity about matters that we now perceive not to be concerned with heresies.
Sometimes these differences may damage the probability of salvation (for an individual person, or for an average group), or the scope of theosis (sanctification) - but they are not heresies.
*
So, I would personally regard the Reformed churches rejection of monasticism as diminishing the scope of theosis, and I would regard the rejection of veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary as making Christianity harder for the average Christian - but neither of these would amount to heresies.
I would regard some recent Roman Catholic dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility as excessively legalistic attempts at doctrinal precision and political control; but I would not regard them as heresies.
*
One of the very few places in his entire ouvre where Lewis displays principled anger is in a letter when he begs Lewis's friend the (then) Benedictine monk Dom Bede Griffiths to please stop trying convert him to Roman Catholicism - and outlaws that topic of conversation.
For Lewis, this behaviour from Griffiths was implicitly based on the assumption that Anglicans were outwith the legitimate bounds of Christianity; hence a denial of 'Mere Christianity' and an act of denominational exclusivism.
*
Although he began as mainly a Low Church Protestant Anglican, and ended-up much more of an Anglo Catholic, Lewis personally seems never to have considered converting to a different Christian denomination (of course he might well have changed his mind later, if he had lived another 25 years - e.g Walter Hooper has argued cogently that Lewis would probably have become a Roman Catholic).
I think Lewis regarded deliberate efforts in this direction of inter-denominational 'poaching' as not just misguided but likely to be dangerous and damaging to Christian unity and therefore to the mystical Church.
(Of course, behind this attitude of Lewis's lies his belief that there is indeed a real and specifically Christian unity across denominations; which is something atht not all of the above authorities would have agreed upon.)
*
On the other hand, Lewis seems not to have objected to people changing denominations, so long as this was:
1. Done for properly Christian reasons, and
2. Did not lead to denigration of the previous denomination.
*
Yet at the level of dogmas, doctrines, liturgies, beliefs, devotional practices, use of Scripture, structure of authority and innumerable other denominational definitions - there is ample reason for mutual accusations of heresy among my authorities listed above; and for each of them ample reasons for exclusivism.
While, on the other hand, the definition of Mere Christianity which unites all these authorities is so simple and basic as to be insufficient as a basis for a Christian life.
*
It seems, therefore, from the Mere Christianity perspective I share with Lewis:
1. That we must have Christian denominations (because the Mere Christianity that is shared between all denominations is insufficient for a Christian life)
2. Yet none of the Christian denominations are exclusively correct.
3. So that each denomination has advantages and disadvantages for particular persons and on average, and in particular circumstances. For a specific person, group, time or place; the choice of denomination may be critical to their Christian life. So denomination does matter - but not in a fashion related to heresy.
4. Mere Christians should strive neither to encourage nor discourage, but instead to play-down the significance of inter-denominational conversions.
5. Once a denomination is Christian, comes within Mere Christianity, we should try to avoid discussions - and especially debates - about heresy. This line of argument should be reserved for those few core matters that must be shared by all Christians.
6. Denominations should be free to manage their internal affairs, and be strong in their distinctive perspectives and emphasis; but without recourse to building internal denominational unity through hatred of or differentiation from other Christian denominations. Denominational unity should be defined against 'the world', and against non-Christian religions; but not against other Christian denominations.
7. There should be no attempt to fuse denominations, since this leads to dilution and weakness and provokes resentment and schism; nor to make formal organizational agreements and declarations - these tend to be bureaucratic and to encourage careerist thinking about Christianity; remembering true Christian unity is mystical, not institutional.
8. Thus the relationship between denominations should therefore resemble the relationship between autonomous nations allied in a war; and the warfare metaphor clarifies why Christian denominations must be allies, and must not engage in mutual denunciation, since they are confronted by an enemy who would destroy them all.
Once it has been determined on which side a denomination is fighting in the great spiritual war - and in that war there are only two sides - then all other considerations should be subordinated to that crucial fact.
*
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Actually, modern Christians do not need to self-identify
*
A while ago I wrote a post advocating that modern Christians should self-identify by wearing a cross or something similar.
But today I realized that this is, or soon will be, unneccesary.
Because the degree of self-identification among non- or anti-Christians is becoming so clear and obvious that Christians will soon be identifiable merely by exclusion.
*
Devout adherents of other religions have often self-identified in the West - ultra-Othodox Jews, Moslems, Sikhs, Hundus and so on.
So that is easy.
But it is characteristic of the late stage of secular cultural Leftism that anti-Christians are increasingly marking and labelling themselves as such: typically by their inversion of the transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.
(The transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue are not - of course - distinctively Christian; but they are intrinsically Christian. Therefore any deliberate, proud, public flouting of any of them is with a high probability self-labelling as anti-Christian - in the absence of self-labelling of being a member of another religion. )
*
Anti-truth is proudly displayed in the use of plastic surgery and bodybuilding drugs - to project lies about a person's age and aptitudes.
To the extent that a person advertizes their enthrallment to fashion they display their inauthenticity, their subordination to prevailing dishonesty above timeless truth; their willingness to mould themselves in accordance with worldly norms.
Anyone who deliberately deploys technology (make-up, hair dye, clothing) and ingenuity (to assemble these) such as to display an image that is (say) fifteen years younger than their true age, is very probably not Christian.
*
Anti-beauty is projected by the proud advertisment of self-mutilations of various types - tattoos, piercings, deliberate uglification with make-up or dye, drunkenness, intoxicating drug usage...
(Of course, a person may mutilate himself and repent to become a real Christian. And they may have been multilated by others - perhaps when young. It is never too late to repent. But Natural Law (as a component part of Christianity) is incompatible with the un-repentance involved in the proud and deliberate display of self-mutilations.)
(And of course being ugly is normal for humans, since beauty is rare and evanescent. It is deliberate uglification, purposive desecration of beuaty, which is sinful, hence anti-Christian.)
*
Anti-virtue is typically (although not excusively) displayed in terns of public, proud, displays of allegiance to any of the tenets of the sexual revolution - whether specific, or a general and indiscriminate sexualization of appearance or behaviour.
Furthermore, anti-Virtue nowadays includes public displays of Leftist markers; since we now realize that Leftism is inrinsically anti-Christian.
(This was not always the case, and in the past there were real Christians who were socialists, for instance - but for the past several decades (at least) Leftism has evolved to exclude Christianity.)
So all manner of Leftist causes may be marked and proudly displayed - whether banners, posters, books, badges, dress styles, or whatever - and these can be used as indicators that the user has a very low probability of being Christian.
*
In conclusion, the small minority of Christians will - before much longer - be able to recognize each other by a double negative: simply as being the only ones who are not clearly self-labelled as not-Christians.
*
A while ago I wrote a post advocating that modern Christians should self-identify by wearing a cross or something similar.
But today I realized that this is, or soon will be, unneccesary.
Because the degree of self-identification among non- or anti-Christians is becoming so clear and obvious that Christians will soon be identifiable merely by exclusion.
*
Devout adherents of other religions have often self-identified in the West - ultra-Othodox Jews, Moslems, Sikhs, Hundus and so on.
So that is easy.
But it is characteristic of the late stage of secular cultural Leftism that anti-Christians are increasingly marking and labelling themselves as such: typically by their inversion of the transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue.
(The transcendental Goods of Truth, Beauty and Virtue are not - of course - distinctively Christian; but they are intrinsically Christian. Therefore any deliberate, proud, public flouting of any of them is with a high probability self-labelling as anti-Christian - in the absence of self-labelling of being a member of another religion. )
*
Anti-truth is proudly displayed in the use of plastic surgery and bodybuilding drugs - to project lies about a person's age and aptitudes.
To the extent that a person advertizes their enthrallment to fashion they display their inauthenticity, their subordination to prevailing dishonesty above timeless truth; their willingness to mould themselves in accordance with worldly norms.
Anyone who deliberately deploys technology (make-up, hair dye, clothing) and ingenuity (to assemble these) such as to display an image that is (say) fifteen years younger than their true age, is very probably not Christian.
*
Anti-beauty is projected by the proud advertisment of self-mutilations of various types - tattoos, piercings, deliberate uglification with make-up or dye, drunkenness, intoxicating drug usage...
(Of course, a person may mutilate himself and repent to become a real Christian. And they may have been multilated by others - perhaps when young. It is never too late to repent. But Natural Law (as a component part of Christianity) is incompatible with the un-repentance involved in the proud and deliberate display of self-mutilations.)
(And of course being ugly is normal for humans, since beauty is rare and evanescent. It is deliberate uglification, purposive desecration of beuaty, which is sinful, hence anti-Christian.)
*
Anti-virtue is typically (although not excusively) displayed in terns of public, proud, displays of allegiance to any of the tenets of the sexual revolution - whether specific, or a general and indiscriminate sexualization of appearance or behaviour.
Furthermore, anti-Virtue nowadays includes public displays of Leftist markers; since we now realize that Leftism is inrinsically anti-Christian.
(This was not always the case, and in the past there were real Christians who were socialists, for instance - but for the past several decades (at least) Leftism has evolved to exclude Christianity.)
So all manner of Leftist causes may be marked and proudly displayed - whether banners, posters, books, badges, dress styles, or whatever - and these can be used as indicators that the user has a very low probability of being Christian.
*
In conclusion, the small minority of Christians will - before much longer - be able to recognize each other by a double negative: simply as being the only ones who are not clearly self-labelled as not-Christians.
*
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