...there has been a moral collapse in the West. The moral collapse preceded the propaganda which in turn nourished the moral collapse. The enemy is both within and without, but mostly within. We renounced the moral code of the past many centuries (you could say five thousand years, beginning with Abraham), for reasons that have not been definitively clarified, though there is much speculation. If better people cannot win back their cultures, or at least secede from the enemy to form new States, then there will be no future for the West. However, I try to remain "on alert" - on the lookout for good signs, such as the recent elections in France and Europe. And the Internet prints the truth which must have some effect in the long term. An economic collapse can always be overcome, but a moral change, a mutation, is much more difficult to comprehend.
There's much merit in this answer. The Western intelligentsia was sickly as far back as the early 1900s (remember Randolph Bourne). It lost the connection to the great values that had once inspired Westerners, and once this emptiness became apparent then it was inevitable that there would be a fall.
But what brought about a sickly intelligentsia? I'm not sure that you can isolate one single reason. Some people go very far back and blame the rise of nominalism in philosophy, namely the idea that there are only individual instances of things and that universals do not exist.
Others take aim at scientism, the idea that the only valid knowledge is that acquired using the scientific method (which means that only concrete, measurable entities are taken seriously).
Western philosophy also took a turn toward scepticism, in which there is doubt that we can have true knowledge of external reality.
It seems to me, though, that the early forms of liberalism are partly to blame for setting up the fall. The idea that society can be organised around the pursuit of rational self-interest in the market cuts right across the older ethos, as does the view that the good can be relegated to a private affair within the civil realm whilst the state remains neutral.
The Anglo cultures were also hamstrung by a tendency to include liberalism itself as part of the ethnic identity; if you believe that being liberal is part of being Anglo, then how do you give it up when it becomes clear that liberalism is undermining the existence of the Anglo peoples?
Finally, the strongest and healthiest current within Western cultures was the one which fused Christian and aristocratic virtues. Whilst this current remained strong, it could keep the West afloat. But in parts of the West both Christianity and the aristocracy went into decline in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
It's true that Christianity retained popular support for much of the 1900s. But the Western intelligentsia had mostly dropped away from Christianity by about the 1880s; and the position of the English aristocracy declined markedly from the very early 1900s.
The problem, then, was both a decline of the healthy current and the existence of a number of competing currents which were incompatible with the older values.
One final point to make is that it is difficult to simply blame the left for what went wrong, as the modern left grew out of the demoralisation rather than bringing it about. In other words, the modern left is more a consequence of the decline; it is what emerges when things have already hollowed out.
"if you believe that being liberal is part of being Anglo, then how do you give it up when it becomes clear that liberalism is undermining the existence of the Anglo peoples?"
ReplyDeleteYou don't give it up entirely - we don't want to be like Saudis or Pashtun. You recognise that liberal individualism - liberty - is just one part of our tradition, not the whole. Folk and soil, throne and altar - these are parts of our tradition too. We are sprung from the soil of north-west Europe, from the Germanic and Celtic branches of the Indo-European peoples, from Greco-Roman classical philosophy, from Christian belief. All these things and others make up what we are and should be.
Simon, it's not easy to give a simple response to your comment.
ReplyDeleteLiberty is certainly a good to be fought for. However, I disagree that liberty is the same thing as liberal individualism.
First, I don't think it makes sense philosophically to make the individual the starting point, as important aspects of individual identity are either expressed within a communal life or else derive from it. If you want to support or uphold the individual, then you have to support and uphold the culture, the traditions, the institutions and the particular communities to which the individual belongs.
Second, liberal individualism has for a very long time been associated with the idea of autonomy, in which we are supposed to remove impediments to our own self-determining will. But the logic of that is to turn the predetermined aspects of life into cages or prisons from which the individual has to be liberated - and the predetermined aspects of life include the communal identities we are born to.
We have to stamp our own understanding on the term liberty. We might emphasise, for instance, that a man who yearns for liberty will want a space within which his own tradition and culture can express its particular genius. Similarly, he will want the particular structures inherent to family life to find expression without injury from the state. He will want the masculine spirit in life to be expressed freely within his community and he will find freedom within a community that upholds a moral standard rather than one that is demoralised.
There does exist some overlap, perhaps, with liberalism - the rule of law is important, as a free man will want to be treated justly in accordance with the law - he will bridle under despotic rule. At the other end of things, he will not want petty, unnecessary intrusions from the state in his everyday life.
"We might emphasise, for instance, that a man who yearns for liberty will want a space within which his own tradition and culture can express its particular genius."
DeleteI agree, but I think it's ok to accept that value X (liberty) is not fully reconcilable with value Y (tradition). That's why there needs to be a balance. The real problem is when a single value becomes absolute, so that in the West individual liberty as the sole legitimate principle has become pathological Totalitarian Humanism, which effectively destroys liberty along with everything else.
I wasn't born or raised a cultural conservative. If I lived in the Republic of Ireland in 1955 I might think there was too little personal autonomy ; I might see cultural conservatives as the bad guys. In London in 2014 the bad guys are the left-liberals stamping out anything that dissents from their creed.
I definitely do think that the Anglo-Saxon tradition, and to a large extent the Anglo-Celtic mix too, has a bigger place for individualism than is found in most cultures. And much good came from that, as well as evil - albeit more good formerly and more evil latterly, I think.
DeleteThe real problem is when a single value becomes absolute
DeleteYes, that's true. I would hope, though, that a traditionalism wouldn't rest on a single value. We're the ones who are supposed to favour a complex order of being, one that is worked out in various ways (i.e. as a matter of principle, but respecting what has worked as part of a tradition over time, and that is shaped in its specifics by a process of politics, alongside the less formal processes of education and culture etc.)
That's why, too, it's important for traditionalists not to see either the collective or the individual as supreme, but to think in more holistic terms of there being a good inherent in the collective tradition, but also a dignity to individual human life, with individual identity and purposes being worked out, in part, through a collective.
Simon, I do agree that Anglo culture for a long time has been more individualistic in the sense of respecting individual boundaries. It's something that I like about our culture. You can see this in the way people in Anglo cultures approach each other; there is a sense of not wanting to impose or intrude by being too blunt.
Yes - I think your synthesis is very effective, and points the way towards a good way to live, not just for ourselves but for our posterity.
DeleteI think our moral collapse began with the crucifixion. As far as the introduction of "scientific thought" and its general contribution to further erosion of individual responsibility by expandsion of government - I recommend "Voltaire's Bastards" by John Raulson Saul (consort to a former Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson).
ReplyDeleteThe latest manifestation of the decline of aristocracy and Christianity is the announcement that the coronation of the new King of Spain will be a secular one without a mass. Is it little wonder that Spanish cities erupted in demonstrations calling for a republic when King Juan Carlos announced his abdication?
ReplyDeleteEngland, the country from which Anglo societies sprang, has never been fully Christianised or fully European and England to the present day is not in a cultural or religious sense a European nation. The secularism of England and the watered down Christianity of Anglicanism has created a rampantly egotistical society which is alien to most of Europe but nevertheless, has been forced on Europe by England's former colony, the hubristic USA.
ReplyDeleteThe Anglo society is the one where the ego reigns supreme and the common good is of little concern. As Thatcher said "There is no such thing as society".
Anon, I think you push this too far. Liberalism and modernity has not exactly been absent on the continent. There was the French Revolution, the nihilism in central and eastern Europe in the later 1800s etc.
Delete"The Anglo society is the one where the ego reigns supreme and the common good is of little concern."
DeleteCivic society has traditionally been very strong in England, and in Anglo-America, far moreso than in most of Europe. People would spontaneously self-organise into non-kinship based civic organisations, and often do a lot of good.
Modern Anglosphere society has become pathological, at least at the elite level. But it's not true that there was never anything good about it.
Mark. In what sense do you say I "push this too far"?. I did not say that liberalism was absent in continental Europe. However liberalism has never developed the same strength there as it has in England. Despite the French revolution, France is a highly nationalistic culture with a stronger Christian culture than in England. All over Europe, nationalist parties are in existence and are a growing and definitive political force. This is true from Greece to France. There are demonstrations against the imposition of homosexual culture and austerity cuts? Are there similar phenomenon in Anglo countries? There are none. Anglo people are the most corrupted and most gullible in the world. They remain passive in the face of growing totalitarianism.
DeleteMark Richardson wrote,
ReplyDelete"We might emphasise, for instance, that a man who yearns for liberty will want a space within which his own tradition and culture can express its particular genius. Similarly, he will want the particular structures inherent to family life to find expression without injury from the state. He will want the masculine spirit in life to be expressed freely within his community and he will find freedom within a community that upholds a moral standard rather than one that is demoralised."
In other words, a man who yearns for liberty will yearn to be a traditionalist.
And if he doesn't? I have pointed out time and time again, sir, that you discount those whom your tradition has marginalized. The falsehood of a tradition that claims to know the way every person ought to live but then leaves some people out is just too obvious.
Liberal individualism is not the cause of the decline. It is to the West what glasnost was to the East. It merely yanked the covers off of truths long suppressed and is forcing us now to deal with them. Liberalism is after all a philosophy devoid of any actual content--it merely releases what(ever) is already inside the hearts of its adherents. A society of men who actually like and are fulfilled by the traditional standards of manhood will freely choose to...continue upholding that tradition. It is only a society where there are some who have always disliked this standard that liberalism will be used as a pretext and a weapon to get rid of what the discontented have always hated.
There's no stuffing this genie back into the bottle. It's out now. Traditionalists can be most useful by continuing to defend what they know to be good, those parts of the old tradition that they really do love, and not being afraid to say so. "Leftists" (in reality a motley assortment of often mutually antagonistic misfits) will continue to fight for the innovations they think will help them reach the good they seek (and I do wish them well in that). If both sides fight well and valiantly, we'll end up in the end with a better tradition, an improvement, that encompasses those formerly left out without removing those who had already been in. And of course that's a big If.
I do think the chances that a new, all-around satisfactory standard of morality will be reached, could be improved dramatically if instead of fighting the other side, each side gave thoughtful consideration to how he could please the other without also wronging himself. Indeed, I do think that approach best fulfills the point of all laws and standards: that we should love our neighbor as ourselves.
Bartholomew,
DeleteI mostly disagree. Liberalism has not just released a pre-existing type of man; liberalism has created him. If you were to show modern liberal society to the liberals of 1850, then it's a safe bet that a large majority of them would be mortified.
Each generation liberal principles have been taken so far, to the point at which anything further would have gone beyond what people would have accepted; until the next generation pushed them that degree further and so on.
It's important to remember as well just what goes on behind the scenes in preparing the ground for these changes. I work at a school. Nearly every single reading text that is placed before students has the theme of white racism (whether to do with blacks in America or South Africa, or Aborigines in Australia etc.). School is not only not neutral; it is there to brainwash young people to think a certain way and, more specifically, to try to demoralise some of the usual attachments or affiliations that young people would normally develop.
If traditionalists were to follow the general temper of your comment, then we would continue to have a losing mindset. The truth is that control of the institutions is of the utmost importance - as the left knows full well. The truth is that having a propertied class whose interests is tied to your own is of the utmost importance. The truth is that having the allegiance of the intelligentsia is of the utmost importance.
These are the battle grounds. Whoever wins is then likely, over the longer run, to pull society in their own direction.
Bartholomew, I disagree vehemently with your idea that loving our neighbour as ourselves fulfils the point of all laws and standards.
Let's say that someone has a 16-year-old daughter. That girl might have a strong libido, an instinct toward having fun, a low level of self-discipline, a reckless streak, a flirty nature and so on. In other words, she might be a bad candidate for the traditional virtue of modesty.
Do we then say: well, she doesn't fit in well with my traditionalist standards, if I seek to impose them she will be marginalised, the whole point of standards is for me to love her as myself, so the fact of her roaming amongst the local boys doesn't matter much, what matters is that I respect who she is in her nature.
Well, I knew girls like this and things ended up badly for them. They more than anyone needed cultural standards.
They needed to be connected to a sense of modesty, because that is a good in its own right - apart from the good of Christian love/charity. They needed this good in order to draw together a workable order of being, in which the longer term outcome for themselves and their communities could be reconciled. They needed the good to avoid immediate hurt and self-alienation. They needed the good to remain open to the experience of marital love and the subsequent particular goods that flow from this (maternal love and so on).
Much evil comes because so few people - white Westerners - have ever even been exposed to the sort of wise advice Mark gives. Girls are told by the media that modesty is a sin and immodesty virtue; boys are told that masculinity is pathological. They rarely if ever hear a dissenting voice, often they have no frame of reference with which to oppose this stuff.
DeleteMark Richardson wrote
Delete"Bartholomew, I disagree vehemently with your idea that loving our neighbour as ourselves fulfils the point of all laws and standards."
Then you vehemently disagree with our Lord, the Apostles Paul and John, and if they're to be believed, all the rest of the writers of the Bible too, because it's not my idea; it's God's. I quote,
Matthew 22:37-40 "And Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”"
Romans 13:9 "Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."
Galatians 5:14 "4 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”"
I could hardly believe my eyes when I read your response, sir. I don't think I've ever read a more direct and unambiguous contradiction of holy Scripture from a self-described orthodox Christian than your response.
As for the promiscuous girls, Paul writes in Galatians 5:13 "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another."
If you observed that the girls were in the end devoured, then your complaint, according to Paul, cannot be with love for one's fellow man. Something else had to have been responsible for their ruin. My guess is a love for their own appetites at the expense of their love for others as for themselves, but I don't know the girls' intentions and hearts as well as you claim to.
And as for the rest of your points, they too reduce to an overall suspicion of the absolute goodness, sufficiency and power of love. You would prefer to trust in status, institutions, and other markers of worldly power. How do the mission and the cross of our Lord make sense to you given that he had none of any of these things?
One more comment, if I may. Mark wrote, and Simon agreed, that a "sense of modesty is a good in its own right - apart from the good of Christian love/charity".
DeleteA "sense of modesty" can of course be a good thing to the extent that it orients someone toward loving God and loving his neighbor as himself. In the case of the girls you knew, did they do loving or unloving things to themselves? If a sense of modesty would have helped them do loving things to themselves, then yes, it would have brought them closer to the good.
On the other hand, a sense of modesty can do harm when it keeps us from loving God or our neighbor. As C.S. Lewis once observed, "I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.” You can see what he meant all the time: the Englishman who, out of a "sense of modesty" and proper Anglo-Saxon propriety, holds his peace when he ought to speak up against this or that societal wrong. Traditionalists bemoan it all the time, and it was for precisely this sense-of-modesty-gone-wrong that Auster used to call the UK "the dead island".
No, a "sense of modesty" and propriety is not and cannot be a "good in its own right". That's just polytheism masquerading as philosophy. There is one good, just as there is one God, and that God, as John tells us, is Love. All other laws and standards, rules and virtues must reduce to love for God and man or they have no meaning and are not valid.
Bartholomew, I'm sorry to be blunt like this, but the way you present Christianity leads to disaster. It leads to the belief that there is no right or wrong except a failure to love another as one's self.
DeleteAs I've pointed out before, this is a dissolving version of Christianity. It means that there are no particular loves and therefore no particular duties - which makes no sense in terms either of scripture or natural law.
I need to learn to express this better, but it encourages the idea that what matters is people as they are and our unconditional acceptance/approval of them, rather than the effort to discipline ourselves to a standard and our encouragement of others to do the same.
Bartholomew, do you note the argument that is put in the Bible about all this. "Love does no wrong to a neighbour". This means that there is a wrong which is not defined by love/absence of love, but which precedes it.
For instance, say that I cheat on my wife and she never finds out. I continue to love my wife. Have I done anything wrong? Only if adultery itself is inherently and independently a wrong. Even if someone argues: but would you like your wife to do this to you and you were to answer "no" - then this still leaves the question of why? Why does adultery seem wrong if you are on the receiving end? Your wife, after all, might still continue to love you. There has to be something in the act itself that marks it out as something that someone who loves another would refrain from doing. The act of adultery itself must first have a kind of moral colour, before it then becomes something that someone who loves one another as himself might permit himself to do or not to do.
Another thought: when you look at what is happening in the New Testament when it comes to morality, you see the contrast between two things:
Deletei) a moral approach focused on following the letter of the law
ii) a moral approach in which there is an inward (inspired) transformation that creates a certain moral personality/character/orientation which then fulfils the moral law
This is the lesson at hand and so there is a particular emphasis on the inward experience in opposition to the formal rule.
It is a good lesson, still relevant today. But I would contest that it was ever meant to mean that there is only one good, that of an abstract love.
Consider the way that Jesus spoke about the moral issue of divorce. When asked to explain his opposition to divorce he did, it is true, say that a readiness to divorce showed a hardness of heart, but he went on to remind people of the existence of a natural law:
But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
Here it is Jesus who reminds us of a meaning to be found within the nature of creation itself, something objectively constituted.
Or consider this from Romans:
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good
Here again we have an emphasis on the inward, spiritual transformation rather than an empty holding to the letter of the law (let love be genuine), but this is followed with "hate what is evil" and "hold fast to the good". There are, in other words, measures of evil and good for a person to accept or reject.
The lesson is that we are to be moved spiritually in what we do, and gain the strength to uphold the moral law in doing so, rather than to formally uphold the letter of the law - to believe the cold act itself to be sufficient.
Seek to act with love in everything you do. But don't be fooled into thinking "all you need is love", as some very foolish men once sang.
DeleteSimon, that's not a bad way to put it, but there is so much more to be said and that needs to be said. For instance, what is meant by the word love? We only have the one word to cover different concepts; the ancient world had different concepts with different words. It needs to be remembered too, that even if we have a good understanding of what agape love entails, it doesn't mean that there isn't a spiritual significance to other forms of love. So it becomes complex: we are to act with one kind of love in some things, and with another kind of love in others, with both bearing significant aspects of spiritual truth. This is not as easy as it sounds to disentangle; the way that agape love is explained sometimes seems very close to the way that philia love was originally understood.
DeleteMark wrote, "The way you present Christianity leads to disaster. It leads to the belief that there is no right or wrong except a failure to love another as one's self...”
ReplyDeleteHow can you describe a world in which everyone loved his neighbor as himself a “disaster”? A world like that would be a great improvement over the world we have now!
"Love does no wrong to a neighbour"…means that there is a wrong which is not defined by love/absence of love, but which precedes it.
First, God is love (1 John 4:8). Therefore nothing can precede love, because nothing can precede God.
Second, your reading ends up turning the Romans 13:10 verse on its head:
If you believe that there are rights/wrongs other than/separate from/wholly independent from love/unlove then
1.) You believe that a man could, while loving someone else as himself, at the same time do something evil to him, i.e. do him wrong, e.g. the adultery you mentioned.
Which means that,
2.) It would be possible for someone to do evil to another while loving him perfectly.
3.) That would mean that perfect love has led the man to wrong another.
4.) That is the same as saying that perfect love has done wrong.
And that is precisely what Romans 13:10 says is impossible: “love does no wrong to a neighbor.”
Back to the 1 John 4:8 passage: John tells us that God is love. You say that love can do wrong things. Since we know that God can do no wrong, then you must deny that God is love. And then you must deny not just 1 John but the entire undercurrent of the Apostle John’s writings and understanding of Christ.
It’s no use even to argue that God must be love as well as whatever you think actually keeps him from doing wrong. If love can do evil, and God cannot, then no part of God could be love, just as no part of God can do evil. God would have to be not love but something more than love. And there simply is no such thing. Haven’t you read what, in the end, shall remain? It is faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. So there is nothing greater than love.
Bartholomew, you wrote:
Delete1.) You believe that a man could, while loving someone else as himself, at the same time do something evil to him, i.e. do him wrong, e.g. the adultery you mentioned.
Which means that,
2.) It would be possible for someone to do evil to another while loving him perfectly.
3.) That would mean that perfect love has led the man to wrong another.
4.) That is the same as saying that perfect love has done wrong.
But the gap in the argument is that we don't love ourselves perfectly. So, yes, it happens all the time that we love people as ourselves but still do the wrong thing.
Women who abort their children because they believe they're not ready to be mothers often say to their unborn child "I'm doing this because I love you and don't want you to be harmed by being brought into the world right now." It seems strange, yes, but that's the idea in their minds. They believe they are acting out of a benevolent love.
I do not think that God's love can do wrong things, but human love most certainly can. We are imperfect vessels.
"But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 7 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."
ReplyDeleteHere it is Jesus who reminds us of a meaning to be found within the nature of creation itself, something objectively constituted.
Yes and no. Yes, divorce is wrong. No, it's not because the physical act is itself wrong (wait, what physical act constitutes divorce anyway?)
If it were a physical virtue we were practicing by being faithful (and did you notice that faithfulness is itself not a natural, empirically verifiable thing?) in marriage, then it would end up being a useless virtue the moment our physical bodies died. Jesus said that there is no marriage in heaven. But of course there will be faithfulness, loyalty, perseverance, i.e. love, which is the end, the telos, of not sticking it into another woman (I'm sorry to be crass, but that's apparently what you mean the virtue of chastity to be).
And anyway, if a man has never physically had sex with another woman (maybe he's too unappealing, etc.) than his wife but callously abandons and replaces his wife in his thought life on a daily basis, what has his physical "chastity" gained for his spirit which obviously has no love for his wife? Jesus said nothing.
Jesus said that it is not what goes into the body that defiles it but what comes out of the heart: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, etc. defile the man. So Jesus clarifies here that adultery and fornication are acts of the heart, not the body.
How else can I make this clear? Compare a married woman’s gynecologist and her office flirtation. Both men at some point physically touch your wife’s “private” parts. But there is an infinite chasm of difference between their intentions. So you tell me: do we hold the gynecologist blameless and the office flirt blameworthy because of what they do or because of what they mean by what they do?
Or consider the priest scandals fifteen years ago, fondling boys' genitals. Now think of the family doctor who does the old drop 'em and cough for the high school football team. Both men touch your son’s “private” parts. The priest gets sued for millions, the doctor bills for the service. Same act. Vastly different intentions. By which standard then do we judge?
It is love that distinguishes the righteous from the unrighteous. The gynecologist acts out a genuine love for the well-being of his patients, not his own appetite at their husbands’ expense like the office flirt. Likewise the doctor and the fallen priest.
You say this is complex, and reality certainly is. God's law, however, is not. You are right to be afraid of the power of freedom that, if divorced from true and perfect love, could be vastly destructive in this complex, imperfect world. Well, that's kind of the built-in fail-safe of Christianity. It was never meant to be lived apart from a personal relationship with Perfect Love Himself. It was never meant to be reduced to an arid set of rules and regulations devoid from the Logos, who is Love, and who is God.
As for your concerns about a dissolving influence, I don't know what you mean. Dissolve what? Pointless rules and regulations that oppress people? I certainly hope so. But if any law can be clearly shown to orient us toward love for God and for our fellow man, how could love ever dissolve it? How can love oppose itself? Do you really think your own traditions would be so unable to hold up under the scrutiny of love? I think then that I must see more goodness in our traditions than you do!
Bartholomew,
DeleteLet's say that a man and a woman are desperately unhappy in a marriage. If it were just a case of having a love for the well-being of them, we would let them divorce, remarry and be happy. In fact, the churches have mostly opposed this, even whilst recognising the misery that it can cause. Why? Because of the way that marriage is understood as a sacramental/covenantal union of a man and a woman - just as Jesus referred to it as being.
You might object: "But the "true" well-being of the man and woman is a spiritual one and so if we really want to act with benevolent love toward them we will hold them to their vows".
And that would be true, but it relies on there being something else besides a disposition of benevolent love, it relies on there being an understanding of what marriage is as a matter of natural law.
Here's another example to consider. I've written lately about the issue of women in combat. The principle "love one another as you love yourself" doesn't help much to solve this moral issue. After all, we don't want any harm to come to ourselves in war, nor would be want harm to come to either men or women soldiers.
DeleteNonetheless, wars happen and we need a defence force. So who should serve? Should it just be men or should it be men and women together? Should women be thought to have just as much of a duty to serve in battle as men?
The traditionalist answer has to look to other things, to issues of what men and women are created for in their natures, physically and spiritually, and to particular duties that flow from this. There is no escaping here some sort of natural law understanding.
And this then pertains to the existence of masculine and feminine virtues, i.e. of how the life principle of womanhood is expressed in its highest form so that a woman best completes the telos she was created for, and the same with men.
If we believe that God created us in his image, then we rightly seek to bring our created being to its fullest or highest completion as an aspect of our telos. And we were created as men and women, not as neutered beings.
The way we express our masculine nature as men matters. And so when we say that we must love God, we must do so as men with a particular nature to express in the world.
Mark wrote "Let's say that a man and a woman are desperately unhappy in a marriage. If it were just a case of having a love for the well-being of them, we would let them divorce, remarry and be happy. [Their well-being is best served by divorce? If divorce genuinely serves someone’s well-being, then it couldn’t be a sin, because sin always damages people’s souls. It’s part of the definition. Period. Full stop. And if divorce isn’t a sin and you prohibit it anyway out of a love for your own traditions and theories, then you sin by valuing mere tradition over actual people’s well-being. That’s a serious sin. See Matthew chapter 23 for Jesus’ take on it] In fact, the churches have mostly opposed this, even whilst recognising the misery that it can cause. Why? Because of the way that marriage is understood as a sacramental/covenantal union of a man and a woman - just as Jesus referred to it as being."
DeleteGod’s plan for marriage is to cause misery for (at least some) people? So the message of the Church to the world is not what Jesus said, “I am come that they may have life and have it abundantly”, but “I am come that they may have misery-causing rituals and marriage covenants”? This presents Christianity as a collection of mindless, misery-inducing taboos, traditions and religious rituals. What about this wild, extravagant, beautiful natural world of ours suggests a Creator like that? I think I’d join Simon of London as an unbeliever if I thought that about Christianity because it’s demonstrably false that our Father sets things up for our misery.
As for the one flesh observation Jesus made, he wasn’t referencing some natural law like gravity. He was referring to Malachi 2, where God spells out the reasons for why he hates divorce (emphasis on the why since God is, after all, God of reason too):
Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless [ Reason #1], though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. 15 Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?[f] And what was the one God[g] seeking?[h] Godly offspring [Reason #2]. So guard yourselves[i] in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. 16 “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her [And here he lays it out: divorce is an offense against love],[j] says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers[k] his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”
Isaiah does not say that divorce is bad because marriage itself is so special, as you argue. He says that divorce is bad because your spouse and children (actual people) are so special, and you have a divine obligation to love them as yourself. Marriage is there to protect people; not the other way around! Dealing treacherously with your wife and your kids is an offense against love. That’s not my idea, Mark. That is Scripture.
To paraphrase what Jesus said in Mark 2:27 about the Sabbath, “Marriage was made for man, not man for marriage.” Your argument gets this exactly backward.
Bartholomew, your response begs the question of why divorce should be considered a sin. Again, let's say that there are two people, who married some years ago, and have no children. They have fallen out of love and are unhappy together. At this moment in time, we could improve their well-being by letting them divorce - unless there is something else that makes divorce wrong. The prime reason is the one you mention in your comment, namely "Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?" It is that insight into the nature of the marital union which is most compelling in making it exclusive and enduring. It is also a reason why true fidelity in a marriage doesn't just mean not committing adultery, but rather an orientation toward drawing together in a relationship with your spouse, physically and emotionally.
Delete"But what brought about a sickly intelligentsia?"
ReplyDeleteIs there such a thing as a healthy intelligentsia? Seriously. Once people start to define themselves as being members of the intelligentsia haven't they cut themselves off from society altogether? And in practice they have also cut themselves off from the real world.
We don't need a healthier intelligentsia. We need a much less numerous intelligentsia.
Interesting thought. The thing is, though, that there is inevitably going to be a certain kind of person who is more interested in books, ideas and culture than the average person and they are going to feel a bit different. The question is how such a person responds. The trend in modernity was for such people not to accept the differences as being a normal aspect of life within a society but to despise their coethnics. I do believe a society has to be particularly careful with those in this situation. They need to be guided toward the larger, sustaining values of the society and to have a good chance to find suitable work and to form families. Complete isolation within a subculture should be discouraged, but on the other hand there should be niches where such people might feel comfortable or have the chance to be amongst peers.
Delete"The thing is, though, that there is inevitably going to be a certain kind of person who is more interested in books, ideas and culture than the average person and they are going to feel a bit different"
DeleteThe difference is that an intelligentsia is a class of people who do nothing else. Being a member of the intelligentsia is their profession. They don't have real jobs, or any place in the real world. Typically they infest universities or the ABC, or government or semi-government authorities, or are advisers to politicians. They have never been exposed to real-world situations. They live in inner-city places like Birchgrove (or the Melbourne equivalent of Birchgrove). Most have never met anyone who wasn't a fellow member of the intelligentsia. Their ideas have never been tested or challenged by reality. They influence government but they are entirely sheltered from the consequences of the policies they promote. They support multi-culturalism and live in cosy little enclaves that are almost entirely white. They are in favour of immigration, because immigrants are not going to take their jobs. They live off the taxpayer and never have to face the consequences of the wrecking of the economy.
I read somewhere recently that France in the Third Republic had the largest intelligentsia in the world at that time. And things did not end well for the Third Republic.
Mark wrote, ”Here's another example to consider. I've written lately about the issue of women in combat. The principle "love one another as you love yourself" doesn't help much to solve this moral issue. After all, we don't want any harm to come to ourselves in war, nor would be want harm to come to either men or women soldiers...There is no escaping here some sort of natural law understanding.”
ReplyDeleteReally? Mind if I take a stab at it? If I were as weak as women are, I’d want someone to fight and defend me too. And I once was when I was a small child. Since I am strong now and therefore more likely to survive the harm of war than the weak, I should fight before them, just as I'd want those once stronger to have done for me.
As for your insistence that women never perform in “combat roles” because it’s against their nature, do you mean to say that a woman should never use physical force to defend herself or another from violence? Surely not. If in war time, the enemy invades the home front, the very last defense of the weakest of all—our children—are our women, and we’d expect our women to throw their bodies in the way of even very small male children (despite the child’s incipient masculine nature, etc.) to defend them from harm.
So you’re wrong to say that we do not want women to fight in “combat roles” in wartime. We just don’t want them to fight first. And the reason for that is not because their feminine natures are not supposed to fight physically. Threaten a mother’s child and see what that feminine nature does! It is as much a part of the feminine nature to defend children with physical force if necessary as it is a part of masculine nature to defend women and children with physical force if necessary. That is because it is in both of our “natures” as Christians to defend the the weak, which is a derivative of the Golden Rule.
The only thing naturally determined is who is weak and who is strong (and when in their life-cycle). Nature does not determine morality, not one bit. It only provides the framework in which morality is lived out. Morality itself is determined by love.
OK Bartholomew. So let's say that warfare becomes so mechanised that it doesn't really require physical strength anymore. For instance, guns and ammunition are so light that anyone, including females, are able to easily lift them and fire them. In this scenario, according to the schema you have laid out, nobody would think it unusual if women were to line up first as combat soldiers.
DeleteBut our moral sense tells us that this isn't right. In part, this is because of a sense of what men and women are in their natures, and what they are called to be. Our bodies give us a very clear indication of this.
You object that "nature does not determine morality, not one bit". But you seem to assume by this that God has nothing to do with natural law. That is not how I see it. God is not nature, He transcends nature, but He is at the same time the creator, and this is reflected in our natures, in what we were created for, and in the created nature surrounding us.
By the way, I don't want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. Part of the argument against women in combat does have to do with practical concerns relating to strength requirements. Also, there is a Biblical emphasis on defending the weak which has permeated Western culture and which no doubt has bolstered the sense of men protecting women from harm.
Even so, women were not the warriors in the pre-Christian West.
One final point. To uphold the idea that all morality reduces to love, you seem to incorporate a lot of other moral qualities into the concept of love itself: faithfulness, loyalty, defence of the weak etc. But these things have other names for a reason, namely that they are identifiable moral qualities in themselves.
So a person likes books and another likes engines. Both are important and both pitch in to create the life we have. Only when one group thinks they are better than the other do we get trouble. Since WW2, one group- the book learners have got WAY above themselves. It'll end in tears.
ReplyDeleteMT Isa Miner.