Christian Civilization -- The Central Issue

[Alexis Jacobi]

And then how are we protected from former abuses of power by dominant religious organizations. Long before the current woke situation, people rebelled against church power, even strongly religious people. Secular society developed out of a rejection of the kind of power the church had (any of them) long before most of the issues you complain about. How do you get secular and religious people to accept a turning back of the clock?

If we are to examine such a question -- this is my proposition -- we really have to start with ourselves. How do we get ourselves to see differently, to understand differently, to correct (what may be) errors of ideation but also, and this is the tough part, our own very real tendency to what is called *rebellion*. How do you communicate with the rebel?

All of your concern (quote/unquote) about the Churches and their authority abuses is not as relevant as you make it. My view -- here comes the Devastating Assessment that will surely crush your sensitive soul -- is that you employ those errors and crimes as a way to keep a whole other, and far more important reality out of sight. So this talk of *rebellion* against the Church has to be examined psychologically. Meaning, that we use such criticisms as an excuse for facing our own situation.

How do you get secular and religious people to accept a turning back of the clock?

This is I think, also a false, obstructing concept. You cannot turn back the clock so it is a dysfunctional metaphor!

What you can do however is to take stock of yourself -- and here I mean that terrifying *we* I often use -- and resolve to restructure yourself on an inner level. This is a really demanding process. I cannot see any way around this. But I know, and beyond all doubt, that the main reason, the driving and determining reason, for rebellion against the immense difficulty to leading (for example) a Catholic ethical and moral life, is that it is simply far too demanding for most people. So they will a) seek a milder form that demands far less, or b) abandon the entire relationship and also c) find, create and present the thousand good reasons why the Christian metaphysical picture is false and defective.

My view? You have to examine things at the psychological level. We are creatures with an astounding capacity to lie to and to trick ourselves.

[Iwannaplato]

There are aspects about 'God' that I do agree with the CC about though, namely that 'He' represents the Fatherly-Father type of Patronage, the Family of Families, the top of all social hierarchies.

Except for you there is no He. They're not thinking of Him as representing, but rather as being.

Furthermore, God is transcendent of time, and therefore not constricted to mere-politics of the modern time and place. Thus, God is Transcendental, Past Present and Future.

If I read just this sentence it would sound like you believe in God.

There are aspects of religion which cannot be secularized, particularly, the requirement for Blind-Faith. It's not up to the masses to be 'logically and rationally' compelled and persuaded into the Catholic faith and orthodoxy. You are also presuming a great deal of IQ to the masses, that they simply do not have. If you want a cow to join the flock, do you read to it from a book, or do you perform simple magic tricks and music that its simplicity can understand? There are many degrees of Dogma and Mysticism which are necessary, and why religions are so pervasive and all-encompassing in the first place.

Once you get people to neither go on experience or reason, you accept the fact that they can be manipulated general. Aren't you just postponing, at best, problems that need to be dealt with? Why wouldn't religion go again through the same process where people rebel against both the beliefs and morals?

Repeat, but assume new outcomes. Why will they be better this time?

Education ought to be, and already is, reserved for the philosophers and intellectuals: Plato's Academy.

Well, the mob is fickle.

How would the various religions manage to accept whatever religion rises to the top? Mormons make up a small and regional percentage of religious people. Protestants are the largest subgroup. How does this get worked out and given the extreme views that the different religious people have about each other (and even a history of wars over this). They view each other often as heretics. Not so much with liberal religious people, but with conservative religious people, the differences are not trivial but are central. How does this get resolve?

They have to fight it out, obviously. I think that religious, conservative, traditional institutions, which provide the best security and defense, against the Religious-Left, will win out over time. All they need is time, really, and their Churches will win out demographically from their birth rates alone

.They, from your perspective, devolved into secularism and increasing Leftist practices, what prevents this from happening again and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

Moslems and Islam do this in Europe, right now. They are winning-out demographically, and will eventually become Democratic majorities, in European countries (like England and France).

While their children get rapidly westernized.

What do you think will happen, when that does occur?

Birth rates go down when immigrants and refugees enter Western nations. Their children become more secularized. I don't know what's coming, but I doubt it's Sharia.

Since this all seems to be one great repetition of History, Secularists will once again need to Protest the centralized Church and Authority.

They already do, against the State, so I don't see why it'd be a problem against the Church.

It unraveled toward secularism before. And this time people know what's outside of religion.

And as i said earlier having the Church be central and ending the separation of church and state, repeals thing going back before the founders of the US, for example. It's not addressing excesses of the current left, it's actually going against values held by the makers of the nation, values conservatives have also voted for and supported.

[Iwannaplato]

All of your concern (quote/unquote) about the Churches and their authority abuses is not as relevant as you make it. My view -- here comes the Devastating Assessment that will surely crush your sensitive soul -- is that you employ those errors and crimes as a way to keep a whole other, and far more important reality out of sight. So this talk of *rebellion* against the Church has to be examined psychologically. Meaning, that we use such criticisms as an excuse for facing our own situation.

And here you go back the psychoanalyzing me. You don't know my situation or what I can or cannot face about it. So: false, also, please stop. You have been managing to talking about things without doing this and there*s no positive reason for doing it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I base my assessments on what you write, what you focus on, and what you also do not talk about. You have two or three choices: a) refute my assessments (which are general), b) explain yourself and your own views in some detail, or 3) stop responding.

My entire presentation, and all of my assessments of Man, involve understanding him psychically and therefore psychologically.

Skip over what you do not like. There is so much there that you can respond to -- if that is your desire. But I will not change any part of my approach.

Clear?

[Iwannaplato]

And none of this is easy, and all of it is controversial in the present atmosphere of contempt for Christianity -- as it is played out on this forum and where exponents of modern philosophical positions explain why they hate it and why they can believe in none of its metaphysics.

Sure, this is going to happen and has happened. So, what's to be done to more around or deal with that?

I think also a key phrase is 'its metaphysics'. Many people think they don't have a metaphysics, but they do And yes, many have a problem with Christian metaphysics or anything that smacks to them as the supernatural. So, three areas of resistance are to what gets called supernatural metaphysics and then those people's issues with Christian metaphysics in particular. Of course it depends on how much of Christian metaphysics Dawson or you think are necessary. Of course there will be resistance to anything that smacks of the supernatural, but there are also specific types of metaphysics that may meet greater and different resistance. And then there's the role of religious organizations in this restoration. Wizard thinks that the separation of church and state must and will end. That goes against fairly long standing (in US terms) traditions that even many conservatives have supported. So, a lot of the reaction depends on what is part of the changes.

And that is why I did describe to you one of the essences: the need, the requirement I suppose, of understanding the conceptual notion of a *higher metaphysics* as something real and as a realness. I start with the conceptual because we are beings who think intellectually. But there is, obviously, that other dimension which has to do with more than mere concept but with the realness of a being -- here I introduce God -- that is understood (within Christianity) to be the Father of all created beings. That is, the being from which all souls have their birth. Now Christianity zeroes in on this with varying degrees of absolutism, right? You can believe in that being in a general sense sort of as a Grand Idea ... or you actually become a devotee and a disciple of that being in a very real sense. The sense of faith-relationship.

Is it enough to have as a grand idea, whatever that means, but not to see it as a real relationship?

So I begin with a declaration: to the degree that we separate ourselves from the concept of a metaphysical reality

I know you use the term differently than me, but I actually think it is granting things that neither of us want/need to the moment only what gets called religious metaphysics is considered metaphysics. Physicalism is a metaphysics. There are faith aspect to that. But that I mean an assumption of something.

and the notion of higher metaphysics and higher values; and the degree to which we separate ourselves from a realness of relationship to God, is the degree to which we fall into The Problem

That seems to answer my earlier question. At times it has seemed like you consider yourself modernist and haven't managed to do this as more than a grand idea, and at other times as something you have managed to believe in/have faith in. If you haven't managed, how do you know this is necessary. If you have, well, then I understand more clearly why you believe it is necessary. I realize I am focusing on you, while I am not interested in focus on me. But given that you and Wizard both seem to want people to believe things or see it as necessary and at least his case don't believe a central part of it, I wonder what that means. But if you have managed to move from the moderist metaphysics to a christian metaphysics, then I am not confused.

Then...do you think an empirical component is key. Often the religious and the empirical are seen as non-overlapping modes. But this is, I think, a fairly recent odd position and one that arose in the West. Faith counterposed to experience, when in fact the Christian mystics and many believers talk about their beliefs in empirical terms. Has there been a shift for you into an experience of the relationship? Or if you're not interested in focusing on yourself: do you see the empirical component as necessary or is faith and the relationship necessarily non-empirical?

What I made an effort to point out and present was expressed in Dawson's ideas about the Sixth Phase of European Christianity. That is, the one that we are now in. Do you think that I am here as a theological apologist with specific recommendations for an individual? No, that cannot be right. And neither can it be said that I fully understand *what is needed* except that I have a strong intuited sense and, obviously, a good deal of backgrounding in my own research and reading. Is this insufficient as *an answer* to your question and to The Question -- it might well be. But at the very least I have expressed what I consider to be the central issue, the core issue.

It is clearer to me now, yes, thanks.

It was not clear to me if there was a more specific plan or idea - Wizard seems to have these and even to some degree quite specifically. You on the other hand seem not to. You see something as the root of the problem and in a very non-specific way as far as societal structures and organizational consequences, a solution. Something that you see needs to be more widespread, without an specifics as to how this takes place at the societal level.

[Wizard22]

Except for you there is no He. They're not thinking of Him as representing, but rather as being.

In the Christian concept what is referred to as Sanctifying Grace is, to put it in typical terms, God's gift to man. And Grace is considered to be a state that really & truly separates man from both nature and (so-called) beast. It is God-given Grace therefore that is what is sought, let's say, by choosing a spiritual path and a path that has rules & regulations, do's and don't do's, and a recognition and a belief in -- wait for it I know you're itching! -- the concept of *sin*. Sin as most know means only an offense before God. Offenses before God establish blocks to being in and (let's say) enjoying Grace and the State of Grace. Here, obviously, I have lost everyone, or most, who reads here. And we definitely know why this is.

We might conceive, in some vague sense, or in a deistic sense, of a *God* that (somehow) created all things. But our definition of God really has no meaning if that God does not, or has not, intervened directly and concretely in this world. And as you well know the Christian belief is that God very certainly, and very concretely, intervened in the world. Not as a metaphor, not as a likeness, not as a vague reference, but in realness. And you also know that this God -- or god-concept if you preferred a vaguer term which allows for a philosophical distance -- established very specific rules & regulations. These were defined, in Christianity, in the early days (the first and second centuries) and then developed, expanded on, perfected, by those labors of theological thought.

It is this -- the entire demanding contract -- that we are all in rebellion against. Really, if you look into it honestly you will see that it is not that Christianity is a dark inhibition against man's true becoming and realization -- this is how it is portrayed naturally (and in some sense how you portray it) -- but rather it is a path for the living of live that is hard, demanding and one that to keep oneself to that path requires constant vigilance. If you knew, and with clarity, what *mortal sins* are you would very clearly recognize why most people find it infinitely easier to commit them, and to remain in a state of mortal sin, rather than confront *sin*, rectify it, and live a very very different existence.

You and all readership here, with the possible exeption of a couple, can no longer *visualize* the God of Christianity as a real being, and you are that much less capable of believing in *sin* as the obstructing, blocking element (like a contaminating goop) that dirties the lens through with Divinity is seen, and effectively contaminated the human vehicle. So, when connect to God expressed in *Grace* and certainly *Sanctifying Grace* as conduits to the higher regions of intellectual realization (in the sense of the Latin and Catholic term intellectus) are broken and lost, man falls down into the *region* so to speak of his naturalism. And this is what Christianity and Catholicism say is the root of the problem. That is why they say *You cannot do it without God*. Man can do all sorts of incredible things, and man is doing them now, but what is intuited is that the culmination of man's efforts will result essentially in -- again wait for it! -- the creation of the machinery that is described as *the Anti-Christ*.

Iwan, I think you're slouching on Alexis' thread and contribution here...

You're missing the point.

There are many ways to approach the 'God' concept. When I refer to 'He' and European (Catholic) Patrilineage and Patronage, Pater Familia, it is purely a natural phenomena in Nature. All mammalian species, every single one of them, have Alpha-males by which the 'Supreme' male (Man/He) reigns over all others, individually, by family, by hierarchy. Western Politics and Secularism focuses on the 'State' of mankind, right now, without God. This misses the point of God being an Entity that transcends any particular place. Thus State and Political Theory can never rise to account for exceptionality or supremacy of some leaders, rulers, kings, and tyrants, over others. Politics cannot predict its own shape or form, whether one culture to the next, or one era to the next, will be: socialistic, capitalistic, communistic, democratic, republican, fascist, etc. Because these are all temporary expressions of human political power, compared to the permanent spiritual power connoted by Godliness, Holiness, or Transcendentalism.

In other words, political leaders do not compare to Jesus Christ. They do not necessarily represent the Moral Good of the entire Human Specie. And this is why Secularists lag far behind when it comes to long-lasting, traditional, powerful, historic cultural institutions. Secularism is temporary at best, an societal orgy, party, rock concert, following from a long hard-fought, catastrophic war. A short reprieve, before war looms again in the next era. Because the 'Good Times' don't last forever. Secularism-Marxism-Leftism-Liberalism may not last more than another decade or two, before they too plunge the entire world into war and chaos.

Because they don't have the 'metal' so-to-speak, to see beyond themselves. They don't have any type nor conception of 'Selflessness'. Hence, they are spiritually lacking, and culturally weak, culturally temporary, NOT permanent fixtures of Western Civilization.


If I may add onto Alexis' contribution above: Grace is a very good term used to truly separate Mankind from Animal/Beast. The opposite of Grace is Sin...Disgrace. Not only is Sin a separating, negative force, that disconnects Man from God...it also shames yourself. Sin separates "You" from Yourself. Alexis' responses inspired some thoughts in me.

God gave us Reason, Faculty, Agency, Conscience, Consciousness, Choice, Free-Will. And what do most humans, most of Humanity, do with this? Squander it. Sin with it. Often times, knowing fully well that what they're doing is "wrong" or self-destructive, at least. Even the junkies lining the streets of America's cities, the down and outs, the beggars, the thieves, know that they are "choosing wrongly". Secularism/Liberalism cannot help them. And Marxism/Socialism, very much put them there. It's pretty much impossible to help somebody, who will not help themself, or hates themself. Self-hatred is Nihilism, the spiritual disease.

Given the Gift, and completely, utterly, Wasted. This is only the beginning though, because I do agree with the Secularists on one aspect of the Nature v Nurture issue—the masses must be 'educated', NOT indoctrinated, NOT propagated, but Truly Educated. I think this is where Christ comes in. Christ is the Educator, for the lowest of the low, the poorest of the poor, the most Nihilistic, the most down and out. Secularists and Liberals cannot help the world's downtrodden, because much of Liberalism is the very reason and cause why they're there in the first place: Selfishness, rather than Selflessness.

[Harbal]

Iwan, I think you're slouching on Alexis' thread and contribution here...

If I may add onto Alexis' contribution above:

Alexis' responses inspired some thoughts in me.

I hope Alexis enjoys having his arse kissed. After all, it won't kiss itself.

[Wizard22]

[ Yawn ]

[Ansiktsburk]

The following is a quote from Christopher Dawson's The Historic Reality of Christian Culture: A Way to the Renewal of Human Life (Routledge, 1960) I read this book some years back and it has very much influenced my outlook. As it happens -- and this note goes out to all who participated in the Christianity thread that endured for so long -- my own position has become full-circle. I accept the necessity of a renovation of the relationship to what is presented, metaphysically, through Christianity and *the Christian picture*. For some that amounts to a wishy-washy way of putting it and I acknowledge that critique. All I can say is that each person, inside of their mind, and with their imagining faculty, will visualize what I so often refer to as a "metaphysical reality" according to their interpretive means and equipment. Even the absolute atheist does this, in my view.

Personally, I am now far more certain and far more committed to the notion and the undertaking of *restoration* and *revivification* of that relationship to what I (somewhat abstractly of course) refer to as *metaphysical reality*. I am certain -- more certain in any case -- that it is the inner relationship that determines if there is relationship at all. What this means, in the most essential sense, is that the individual has, or does not have, that relationship. Everything begins from that point. Or put another way, it comes to an end when the relationship is broken or inhibited.

If we recognize, and I do, that our culture is sick, we must also understand that we manifest this sickness in one way or another, in one degree or another. Obviously then, I am an advocate for defining "A way to the renewal of Christian culture" which, necessarily, involves an inner renewal.

So what I propose -- it remains to be seen if the topic will gain any traction -- is an examination, from the perspective of Christopher Dawson and other apologists of his sort, of just what happens when the conceptual pathway to that *supernatural* world of metaphysical reality is broken and shattered, as is occurring strongly and noticeably in our culture(s) and then, if this is established, to ask the question and examine what such *renewal* would involve -- and if it is even possible.

Here is a selection from the above-mentioned book for your examination:

The average man's 'objection to Christian civilization is no an objection to medieval culture, which incorporated every act of social life in a sacred order of sacramental symbols and liturgical observances — such a culture is too remote from our experience to stir our emotions one way or the other: it is the dread of moral rigorism, of alcoholic prohibition or the censorship of books and films or of the fundamentalist banning of the teaching of biological evolution.

But what the advocates of a Christian civilization wish is not this narrowing of the cultural horizons, but just the reverse:the recovery of that spiritual dimension of social life the lack of which has cramped and darkened the culture of the modern world. We have acquired new resources of power and of which the old Christian civilization had hardly dreamed. Yet at the same time, we have lost that spiritual vision man formerly possessed-the sense of an eternal world on which the transitory temporal world of human affairs was dependent. This vision is not only a Christian insight: for it is intrinsic to the great civilizations of the ancient East and to the pagan world as well, so that it is not Christian civilization alone·that is at stake.

Here I think John Baillie, in his little book on What is Christian Civilization, makes a useful and necessary distinction when he objects to the use of the word "pagan” to describe the dominant spirit of a secularist society:

“The word pagan [he says] is often unthinkingly used as if it meant a man who was devoid of all religious sentiment and worshipped no gods. But all real pagans are full of religious sentiment and their fundamental error rather lies in worshipping too many gods. The alternative today is not between being Christian or being pagan, but between being Christian and being nothing in particular, not between belonging to the Church and belonging to some social spiritual community that claims an equally wholehearted allegiance, but between belonging to the Church and belonging nowhere, giving no wholehearted allegiance to anything. Such is the tragedy that has overtaken so much of our common life that it belongs nowhere, has no spiritual home, no ultimate standards of reference and little definite conception of the direction in which it desires to move.”

I think this is surely true as a diagnosis of our present civilization. But society cannot remain stationary in this kind of spiritual no man's land. It will inevitably become a prey to the unclean spirits that seek to make their dwelling in the empty human soul. For a secular civilization that has no end beyond its own satisfaction is a monstrosity -- a cancerous growth which will ultimately destroy itself. The only power that can liberate man from this kingdom of darkness is the Christian faith.

For in the modern Western world there are no alternative solutions, no choice of possible other religions. It is a choice between Christianity or nothing. And Christianity is still a live option. The scattered elements of Christian tradition and Christian culture still exist in the modern world, though they may be temporarily forgotten or neglected. Thus the revival of Chris-tian civilization does not involve the creation of a totally new civilization, but rather the cultural reawakening or reactivation of the Christian minority.

Our civilization has become secularized largely because the Christian element has adopted a passive attitude and allowed the leadership of culture to pass to the non-Christian minority. And this cultural passivity has not been due to any profound existentialist concern with the human predicament and divine judgment, but on the contrary to a tendency toward social conformity and too ready an acceptance of the values of a secularized society. It is the intellectual and social inertia of Christians that is the real obstacle to a restoration of Christian culture. For if it is true that more than half the population of this country are church members, Christians can hardly say that they are powerless to influence society. It is the will, not the power, that is lacking.

Newcomer in this thread, what is our culture and what is sick about it?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Newcomer in this thread, what is our culture and what is sick about it?

Wait, haven’t you watched the mini-series?

Our culture is … an old tennis shoe.

Our sickness … a stomach flu from eating contaminated strawberries.

Doncha know?!

[Ansiktsburk]

Newcomer in this thread, what is our culture and what is sick about it?

Wait, haven’t you watched the mini-series?

Our culture is … an old tennis shoe.

Our sickness … a stomach flu from eating contaminated strawberries.

Doncha know?!

I’m still not enlightened

[Alexis Jacobi]

Harbal is a past master at seeing and understanding nothing. That is where his commitment lies! Amazing as that is he is only getting better day by day.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I’m still not enlightened

Avoid strawberries. Things will slowly improve.

[Ansiktsburk]

I’m still not enlightened

Avoid strawberries. Things will slowly improve.

There are no strawberries here so thats good

[Harbal]

Harbal is a past master at seeing and understanding nothing. That is where his commitment lies! Amazing as that is he is only getting better day by day.

Perhaps I understand a little too much.