You may talk of God as a mystification or a metaphor; you may boil him down with gallons of long words or boil him down to the rags of metaphysics. It is not merely that nobody punishes you, but nobody protests. But, if you speak of God as something like a tiger, as a reason for changing ones conduct, then the modern world will stop you if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent, it is now thought irreverent to be a believer.
-G.K. Chesterton
the false transcendent vs. the Real Transcendent
intellectual exchanges between Derbyshire and Spencer vs. mystical images the likes of Thérèse of Lisieux
It may be a bit of an over-simplification to say that there are 2 types of people - those who try to live as if their lives made sense and those, as the mid-20th century Cardinal Archbishop Emmanuel Celestin Suhard of Paris wrote, "TO BE a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda or even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist." (Long before Dorothy Day came to know and cherish those words of Suhard's, she exemplified them in her own life.)
When we get stuck in the Enlightenment and post-Christian world of intellectualizing God we strip ourselves of the only source of Real Knowledge. It is this trap that we fall into when we feel drawn to take sides today in most religious discussions when in fact BOTH sides of the argument, all too often, are void of any transcendent or mystery. And when we foster, promote and encourage this sort of waywardness from mystery we are in fact partnering with the forces (another example of MT at work) which deteriorates our ontological density (the Christ-centeredness of the person in each of us).
3 comments:
I know that I packed a bunch in this post, but...for one thing:
Spencer writes, "... (I wrote the book) to give people who enjoy the benefits of living in the Judeo-Christian West a sense that they have a culture and a civilization that they should be proud of, and begin to defend more forthrightly and unapologetically."
If we want to sit back in some sort of pride factor living in a Judeo-Christian West and not have to be about liturgy, Mass, Eucharist, charity through humility, repentance and thanksgiving than I rest my case.
Do you see?
Spencer here does not point to the Real Presence for any strength of his argument; he is caught up in justifying the horizontal world of mimetic contagion - a tiff for tat: “we're better than you are” playground squabble; I grant you that it is at an adult level. His arguments are probably right in this world of push and shove, but for all I see he seems to be promoting (structurally) the same old - same old.
The more I think about it, and as I remember Gil once commenting, it all boils down to evangelization. And evangelization is about spreading the Christ contagion - not by pointing to the Koran or making out of an enemy, but by being Christ (allowing Christ to increase the ontological moorings and decreasing your schemes and wants).
Aramis wrote: "It may be a bit of an over-simplification to say that there are 2 types of people ..."
IMO, Aramis, it is not an oversimplification. After all, C. S. Lewis observed that every single person we meet is heading via their decisions either heavenward or hellbound. Likewise, Bailie said that literature falls into either Gospel or myth (what doesn't?).
Many have their attention distracted by the "bright shiny things" of the skilled academic or marketing ploys, but sooner or later these victims find themselves in the far country of the Prodigal Son, slopping pigs or worse. But even there, God's prevenient grace goes before them -- inviting, wooing, cajoling them back. (O Lord, protect me from those bright, shiny things!)
Great post.
Dear Athos,
If then as you say, "IMO, Aramis, it is not an oversimplification. After all, C. S. Lewis observed that every single person we meet is heading via their decisions either heavenward or hellbound. Likewise, Bailie said that literature falls into either Gospel or myth (what doesn't?)," taking this concept out to the stratosphere (or the Big Void) to our discussion on the difference of the traditional Muslim and the radical jihad, would not these folks only differ to their earthly actions, but they, without coming to some sort of life in Christ, where their being takes on the Transcendent Other so as not to get caught up in the mimetic contagions of the horizontal nature and the inevitable ressentiment it is bound to nurture, where they either commit violence or lend a hand in violence by not witnessing to God who came to us to save us from our violence.
Boy, that was a month full.
In other words, we either
1) believe the Gospel that we are to evangelize the world, bringing Christ to all, (which is virtually done in this age isn't it?) and thus, as CS Lewis says, everyone decides whether to choose a life in Christ or ressentiment and violence; or
2) we just intellectualize and compartmentize our lives so as not to have to really go along with the Gospel, and therefore add our voice to the human rhetoric grounded in the mimetic contagion of human violence.
We have that choice to either participate in the coming of the Kingdom - a Life in Christ or participate in the human soap opera of ressentiment and violence. Everyone has a calling, we could be traditional or radical about it, but it comes down to them 2 choices me thinks.
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