On Sunday I spent a very nice hour on air with Zeph Daniel (http://www.zephnet.com/). It was a spur of the moment discussion, without any planning and without any script. We both like to “just think out loud” about art, culture, history, philosophy and Christianity and that’s usually what you hear whenever I am on-air with Zeph - two middle aged dudes, chewing the fat as it were. There’s only so much we can discuss in an hour, and often we just get to hit the high points and have to forego detailed discussions. For example, we could have spent an entire hour discussing the changes in Christianity under Constantine. Likewise, we could have spent several hours discussing the development of western music from plainchant to Rock and Roll. We didn’t do more than briefly touch on architecture and painting. So, I thought it might be good to expand a little and follow up on some of what we discussed.
I Didn’t Expect the Spanish Inquisition!
At one point I mentioned the Spanish Inquisition and may have seemed to defend that corrupt institution. I need to make sure that the point is clear. I have no intention of defending the corruptions that took place, but at the same time we need to be more objective and deeper in our analysis of history. The Christianity haters love to use the Inquisition as a prime example of the horrors of Christian culture. I will confess that I am ornery enough to want to take their arguments, turn them around, and use them to defend Christianity. The point to be made is that even though the Inquisition was a corrupt institution, it nevertheless carries a valid idea that is an important change from prior cultures.
Philosophers will often say “check your premises” and that is what we need to look at here. The false premise of the Inquisition was not that heresy is evil and must be driven out of the body of Christ. The false premise is that the Church should act as judge and executioner on behalf of God. We are to teach, to encourage, but not to destroy. What is important to see in the Inquisition is that its purpose was not condemnation and torture for the purpose of terror, but rather for the purpose of rehabilitation. That is a remarkable forward step in the history of ideas and ultimately becomes the basis of our justice system today. Whenever possible, we seek to rehabilitate rather than to merely punish. That is the ultimate influence of Christianity on our culture. A man’s soul is precious and we should care about that soul even in those who have fallen into evil acts. God shows us mercy, forgiveness and offers redemption, and we are instructed to follow that pattern in our dealings with each other.
Our word “Penitentiary” is derived from the word “penitent.” In principle, we send criminals to prison so that they will come to realize their actions are wrong and repent of the wrongdoing so that they may be restored to the community. This idea reflects the teaching of Jesus that we forego “and eye for an eye” and instead “turn the other cheek” so that we do not repay evil with evil but with good. The same principle is given by Paul in his epistles. We should seek to restore someone caught in a fault.
When you remove the Christian foundation, the prison system becomes a farce and mockery of justice. Without spiritual understanding and counseling, the prison gate becomes a revolving door for men whose hearts and minds are hardened and materialistic. They no longer seek repentance and renewal, but only do their time quietly so that they can return to what they want to do. Consequently, the justice system is moving and will move back toward the idea of retribution rather than rehabilitation. The idea of justice will turn back to what it has been throughout most of the world’s history and is throughout much of the world today. It took many centuries of cultural development to get past the idea that justice is equal to retribution. It may take only a few decades to return to it.
Vincent
Last week I watched on television a biography of Vincent van Gogh. The program concentrated on the man rather than the art, what motivated him in other words. What is often forgotten or passed over quickly is that van Gogh was the son of a Christian pastor. In his early years he struggled with his faith but eventually came to declare that “the old faith” was the true one. He later quit his job as an art dealer and became a Christian preacher and missionary. Unfortunately, he was recalled and dismissed as overzealous. It was at that point in his life that van Gogh turned to painting. It was van Gogh’s spirituality that is ultimately what motivated his painting. As most everyone knows, he was never financially successful with his painting, relied on support from his family, and died a pauper. His painting was for another purpose altogether. He sought to find a way of expressing his spirituality through the use of color and light. In so doing he initiated a whole new method of artistic expression.
But van Gogh is not an isolated case. Many of the great painters in western history have been motivated by religious beliefs and our greatest art treasures are those associated with Christianity. Think of the painting and sculpture of Michelangelo, or da Vinci’s Last Supper, and you begin to get the idea. From medieval icons to modern art, Christian art was always at the leading edge of artistic expression and development. Ironic, then, that today’s so-called Christian art lacks that type of intensity, inventiveness and creativity. Secular art today is often not much better. It too is often tedious, derivative, and historically inconsequential. Without a deep spiritual motivation artistic expression fails to reach the heights that it has in the past.
Universal Literacy and Public Education
One of the remarkable achievements of Western civilization is near universal literacy. There are certainly other cultures that prize literacy to a similar degree, but it was by and large the Christian missionaries that went from place to place establishing schools that led to the high level of literacy around the world today. For most of human history that has not been the case. It wasn’t just that books were unavailable; it was (and is) much easier to control and rule over a multitude of men if they are illiterate and ignorant. As recently as the 19th century, it was illegal in the U.S. to teach a slave to read. It is dangerous for tyrants to educate the people.
The protestant reformation, combined with the development of the printing press, changed all that in the west. If, as Luther claimed, Christians are a priesthood of believers, then each believer must be able to read the Bible for himself. When the laity has Bibles and can read and comprehend them, it is much more difficult for corrupt pastors to lead the sheep astray. To that end the protestant reformers set about translating, printing and distributing Bibles. They also taught the people to read them. Although the printing press made books widely available they were still expensive. A home might have only a few books, but at least one of them was likely to be the Bible. The Bible became more than just a sacred book; it was also the primary “reader” for teaching.
In addition to the importance of the Bible to literacy, it became equally important to literature. The examples would take far too long to enumerate, but briefly, you cannot grasp western literature without knowledge of the Bible. In the past it was assumed that everyone knew and understood the Bible and many Biblical references in western literature are never explicitly stated as from the Bible. It is beyond irony that the Bible is no longer welcome in the public schools of the United States. I would go so far as to say that it is irrational. This is not an issue of religious belief at all. It is simply impossible for anyone to understand western history and literature without knowledge of the Bible and Church history. Yet, that is what the contemporary educational system is attempting to do. The literacy and educational system that stems from Christian heritage no longer allows that heritage to be taught. If the Bible and Church history are taught at all, they are most likely taught from a negative perspective.
The consequence of this change is that many Christians are removing their children from the public schools and either setting up private schools or schooling the children at home. The result of that movement is no doubt of benefit to the Christian’s children but will continue to create problems for the public educational system. Eventually we are likely to see a dual system of education with some students having a good grasp of western history and others without it, further deepening the divisions within western societies.
Seeking the “New Age”
On Sunday we briefly discussed the change that took place by the middle of the 20th century. It seemed as if western history had hit a dead end. Philosophy had run aground in nihilism and existentialism. Science and the consequent technology had reached a point of mass destruction. Political and economic theories had led to the Great Depression. All of the so-called intelligentsia pointed the finger at religion, denounced the past and sought to create a new world based on humanism without traditional religion. This ideology was put forth in the Humanist Manifesto. If you haven’t read it, you should. Here are few excerpts.
“There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century.”
“Such a vital, fearless, and frank religion capable of furnishing adequate social goals and personal satisfactions may appear to many people as a complete break with the past. While this age does owe a vast debt to the traditional religions, it is none the less obvious that any religion that can hope to be a synthesizing and dynamic force for today must be shaped for the needs of this age.”
“Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.”
“It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural”
http://www.americanhumanist.org/about/manifesto1.html
Notice that everything is directed towards man’s physical well-being with no acceptance of a higher level of being at all. That’s what they mean by humanism - man centered, man created, man decided. It is a philosophy that treats your existence as only temporary, so get what you can here and now. To somehow call that type of thinking a new “religion” is ludicrous (to say the least).
When I first read this treatise, I threw it on the bookshelf in disgust. I did so, not because it is clearly anti-Christian, but because it is irrational and ignorant of human history. It is hard to see how apparently intelligent men and women could make such ludicrous statements. Summed up, what the Humanist Manifesto says is, they want the benefits that have been born out of religion without all that supernatural nonsense. That type of belief is incoherent. I have written in the past about the inability of man to build a coherent moral philosophy without first having a higher ontological category of being. Yet, that is what the Humanists seek to do. They seek to keep the edifice of western civilization while removing the foundation, apparently failing to see the connection.
The moral virtues promoted by Christianity are a direct result of its belief in a Creator that is beyond our physical world. Christian morality is a reflection of the divine nature, not something invented by man for man’s convenience. Because moral precepts come from a higher authority, they are applicable to all and can and should be enforced universally. However, a moral system that is derived from man can be changed whenever man desires to do so. In effect you have no morality left, only what is convenient to the majority of the moment, or what is imposed by a ruling elite. Morality is no longer stable but changes with the current ideology. What is moral today may be immoral tomorrow, and vice versa.
Likewise, western science owes its origins to that same supernatural theology. So long as God is in nature, you will not look at nature with an objective view. To do so would be blasphemy. Once God is lifted to the level above nature (super-natural) then it becomes permissible to seek to manipulate natural forces in an effort to understand them. It also becomes possible to do so. If God is some natural force, then you can never be sure that the forces of nature you are studying are reliable and consistent and not simply the whim of a deity. In its origins, western science relied on the idea of a Creator who established a universe of consistent behavior, or natural law. It was that idea that made science possible. This unfortunately led to the wrong conclusion that science depends on either ignoring or disavowing the super-natural. God had to be got rid of somehow, or so they thought. Since science was objective and materialistic, what concern was it of the scientist if he simultaneously destroyed morality?
True students of human history would recognize the insanity in all this. Even if it is discounted as some fantasy, a mere invention of human minds, belief in the supernatural and the spiritual are consistent aspects of human thought through all ages. Not all men believed in the supernatural, of course, but the majority has always done so. If you attempt to remove that spiritual quality of existence you end up with a castle in the air - a morality with no coherent philosophical foundation and no authority to impose moral action on anyone. You end up with a science and technology with no moral limits. After all, who are you, if you are only a man, to impose your morals on me? Human societies do not function well when that higher spiritual authority is discarded. They ultimately descend into either chaos or tyranny.
On the off-chance that some wandering humanist should stumble on this writing, my answer to you is this: You had your chance and it failed miserably. It was called the Soviet Union. They suppressed that ancient religious instinct and did not get the moral society that you claim we would have as a result. Are you truly going to argue the Soviet Union as a model of morality? The rich cultural tradition of the 19th century Russia never recovered from the communists either. After the “Mighty Handful” and Tchaikovsky, what do you have? Shostakovich and then… nothing. Where is the 20th century Dostoevsky? With all of its natural resources, engineers and scientists, rich cultural and religious tradition, the best the Soviets could do was build lots of bombs while the people suffered. It couldn’t compete with even the remnants of Christendom in the west and didn’t last out the century.
Thus, it is no surprise to see in the 20th century an attempt to regain that element of spirituality that was discarded. It begins with Theosophy and Anthroposophy and evolves into what we now call the New Age. It is a syncretistic attempt, somewhat similar to the humanists, but is equally beset with the “what works for you in this life” attitude. That attitude has never worked well in human history and there is no reason to think that it will work any better in this “new” age.
And so it goes…
So, that is where we are today, floundering forward into an uncertain future that appears increasingly chaotic and barbaric. We can’t recapture the past, and shouldn’t try. Leave the mistakes in the past while we learn from them. At the same time we cannot ignore the foundations the past was built on. We now know for certain that the problem was not religious beliefs, and was not the Christian ideals either. We know also that science and technology will not solve the problems of human nature. Man always needs a spiritual answer to his questions of purpose in life and no philosophy that ignores that can succeed for very long.
Christianity as a whole did not keep up with the changes, did not respond to them, but rather attempted to only hold on to the rituals and practices of the past. And so, the edifice of “Christendom” will fall. It is well to remember that it was not the form of religion that was the foundation of Christendom. The foundation stone was and is Jesus Christ. It was faith in Him and understanding of His teaching as explained by the Apostle Paul that set the Christians apart. The form of religion may change, but the message remains the same. That’s what we hold onto going forward.
