The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Politically Incorrect Guides) (24 page)
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Authors: Anthony Esolen
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“I don’t know anything to sing,” replied the herdsman. “That’s why I left the feast, because I can’t sing.”
“Nevertheless, you can sing.”
“What shall I sing?” said Caedmon.
“Sing me the First-Making,” said the angel. At which point Caedmon burst into a hymn glorifying God the Father who established the heavens and the earth:
Now let us laud the Lord of heaven’s realm, the Measurer’s might and his mind-plan, work of the Glory-Father as every wondrous thing, Chieftain eternal, he established from of old.He first shaped, for the sons of earth, the high roof of heaven, holy Creator; the middle-yard mankind’s Lord,Chieftain eternal, adorned after that, made the earth for men, the Master almighty.
This charming hymn he composed was in the heroic meter of the old sagas, using the same heroic language. When Caedmon awoke, he told his bailiff about it, who brought him to the abbess, and she, wise woman, instructed the monks who could read to tell him a story out of the Scriptures, to see what he would do with it. He returned the next day with a heroic narrative poem. “It is a gift from God,” she concluded. So Caedmon was brought into the monastery, not to learn Latin, but to compose song after song in Anglo-Saxon. It is an astonishing instance of the fusion of two cultures, and because of it we have the glories of Old English poetry.
“What does Ingeld have to do with Christ?” asked the learned Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne, one of the bright spots in the centuries of social confusion after the breakup of the Western empire.
13
Alcuin was annoyed that his monks were entertaining themselves with tales, passed down by song over centuries, of the feats of the pagan Germanic heroes. He was, of course, echoing Tertullian’s rhetorical question from long before. But the answer would come from the experience of missionaries, and from the artists who saw in the old ways a foreshadowing of the Christian revelation. What did Ingeld have to do with Christ? According to the author of
Beowulf,
a great deal indeed.
13
Alcuin was annoyed that his monks were entertaining themselves with tales, passed down by song over centuries, of the feats of the pagan Germanic heroes. He was, of course, echoing Tertullian’s rhetorical question from long before. But the answer would come from the experience of missionaries, and from the artists who saw in the old ways a foreshadowing of the Christian revelation. What did Ingeld have to do with Christ? According to the author of
Beowulf,
a great deal indeed.
If you study the heresies condemned by the early Church, you’ll find excellent ammunition against the accusations of the smug atheist. First, many anti-Christians believe that their opponents actually accept some of the harsher, world-loathing heresies. Alternatively, they condemn Christians for being closed-minded, authoritarian, and, yes, intolerant; while
they
have the privilege of condemning all to themselves. It does not occur to them, or they don’t care, that a faith without definition is like a body without skin. A cursory study of heresies will reveal the folly of these positions.
they
have the privilege of condemning all to themselves. It does not occur to them, or they don’t care, that a faith without definition is like a body without skin. A cursory study of heresies will reveal the folly of these positions.
True, the Church fathers spent much time debating, not always coolly, who Jesus was, what was the nature of his relationship with the Father, what was to be understood by the Holy Spirit, what was the true Church, which books were inspired by God, and how man is to be saved.
But before the reader shakes his head with a superior air (easy to do, when the debate is far away and he is ignorant of what is at stake), let’s enumerate a few of the heresies.
14
Some people believed that a true Christian must be a martyr of blood, so they sought violent death, sometimes by provoking their oppressors. Some, tainted by the body-hatred of certain Eastern cults and religions, believed that Jesus did not have a genuine body (because matter is intrinsically evil), and that to be saved we must cleanse away this corporal scurf, by fasting and abstaining from sex. Or, as a more convenient alternative, one might gleefully indulge in orgies, since, after all, only the soul counts for anything.
14
Some people believed that a true Christian must be a martyr of blood, so they sought violent death, sometimes by provoking their oppressors. Some, tainted by the body-hatred of certain Eastern cults and religions, believed that Jesus did not have a genuine body (because matter is intrinsically evil), and that to be saved we must cleanse away this corporal scurf, by fasting and abstaining from sex. Or, as a more convenient alternative, one might gleefully indulge in orgies, since, after all, only the soul counts for anything.
Some believed that the God worshipped by the Jews was evil, superseded by the God of love whom Jesus called Father. Some believed that Jesus was not the Son of God, but a creature, “adopted” by the Father for his obedience. Some believed that Jesus never died, and that it was only a specter that the Romans nailed to the Cross. Some believed that one could earn one’s way into paradise by energetic good works, as if man needed no savior at all.
Set aside the question of whether Christian orthodoxy presents the truth about God and Christ and man’s destiny. The controversies, which lasted several centuries, were no waste of time. Their resolution redounded to the cultural benefit of the West. Why?
Again, the pagan religions had nowhere to go. No educated man really believed in the Homeric gods, and as for neoplatonic mysticism, with its melange of obscure terms, airy abstractions, and magic, even the educated would find it nearly impossible to understand, let alone be guided by it from day to day. It was the superstitious and fidgety who sought out the mystery cults, with their secret knowledge and their orgies of initiation. That was a cultural dead end, and several of the heresies would have sent Christian worship along the same short unproductive road.
Most notorious was the body-reviling Gnostic heresy which, to listen to the ill-informed critics of Christianity in our schools, you would think was Christian dogma. Had the Gnostics won the day, Christians would have retreated from the world. Why bother plowing fields and copying books and repairing the aqueducts, when this world is all an illusion, and the only real knowledge is whispered from one secret master to another?
The danger (speaking culturally, not theologically) of other heresies was more subtle. The most popular heresy, Arianism, maintained that Christ was a creature, though exactly what kind of creature the Arians did not make clear. Here is Saint Jerome, discussing the verbal sleight-of-hand used by Arian-leaning bishops of the fourth century:
Eminent Christian bishops of course, began to wave their palms, and to say they had not denied that He was a creature, but that He was like other creatures. At that moment the term
Ousia
[meaning “being” or “substance,” as in the creedal statement that Christ is consubstantial with the Father] was abolished: the Nicene Faith stood condemned by acclamation. The whole world groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian. (
Dialogue against the Luciferians
)
Had the Arian heresy triumphed, I would not now be writing a
Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Western Civilization,
because the Christian faith would have fizzled out, along with the Greco-Roman world it in part preserved. The reason is hard for us to see, because we do not appreciate the cultural revolution ready to explode from the declaration, God is Love.
Politically Incorrect Guide™ to Western Civilization,
because the Christian faith would have fizzled out, along with the Greco-Roman world it in part preserved. The reason is hard for us to see, because we do not appreciate the cultural revolution ready to explode from the declaration, God is Love.
If Arius was correct, then Jesus was only a creature, albeit the highest. Then God can be said to love, but He cannot said to
be Love
. He is not in his own right a relationship of love among three Persons. He retreats into transcendence: he does not really enter the world to dwell among us. In that case he either becomes the inscrutable and irrational Allah of the Muslims, a universal sultan, or he vanishes into an abstraction, a Neoplatonic Being, impersonal and unapproachable. Christian worship either way loses its bridge between earth and heaven. Its commandments harden into the dictates of a despot, or decay into a moral philosophy, like Stoicism, benevolent enough, but in most men too weak to withstand the furies of the heart. It is the path Unitarianism took in nineteenth century America, from a dilute Christianity at the Harvard of John Quincy Adams, to a vague theism with an overlay of Christian moral teaching at the Harvard of his grandson Henry Adams, to the cultural nonentity it is now, a hobby for atheists or pantheists who like hymns and incense.
be Love
. He is not in his own right a relationship of love among three Persons. He retreats into transcendence: he does not really enter the world to dwell among us. In that case he either becomes the inscrutable and irrational Allah of the Muslims, a universal sultan, or he vanishes into an abstraction, a Neoplatonic Being, impersonal and unapproachable. Christian worship either way loses its bridge between earth and heaven. Its commandments harden into the dictates of a despot, or decay into a moral philosophy, like Stoicism, benevolent enough, but in most men too weak to withstand the furies of the heart. It is the path Unitarianism took in nineteenth century America, from a dilute Christianity at the Harvard of John Quincy Adams, to a vague theism with an overlay of Christian moral teaching at the Harvard of his grandson Henry Adams, to the cultural nonentity it is now, a hobby for atheists or pantheists who like hymns and incense.
In one fashion or another, the heresies flatten Jesus, mostly to deny his humanity, as unworthy of him, and sometimes to deny his divinity. Here I am not arguing theologically but culturally. Christianity survives—nay, it
exists
—only where Jesus is affirmed as both God and Man.
exists
—only where Jesus is affirmed as both God and Man.
That matters. Recall that the Jews and the Greeks had much to say about the natural law, what C. S. Lewis called “The Tao,” a set of principles that are not the
result
of moral inquiry, but its foundation, self-evident to all men who are not corrupted.
15
You do not steal. You love your family. You sacrifice for your country. You take care of the infirm. But, as well-attested as these principles are everywhere, they are also violated everywhere, and their connection with man’s destiny and his being is not clear. With the Jews that connection is clear, since the laws are given by God himself. But the Jews are in part constricted by culture. The prophets do
preach
that the law will be given to all nations, and, as I’ve written, the Jews were chosen to carry that law. Yet Rome and Greece and Germany and Ireland could only become Jewish, so to speak, by becoming Christian. And then men saw not only that Christ came into the world, but that the very meaning of this world is stamped with Him, redeemer and creator both. For the world too is loved, and made new.
result
of moral inquiry, but its foundation, self-evident to all men who are not corrupted.
15
You do not steal. You love your family. You sacrifice for your country. You take care of the infirm. But, as well-attested as these principles are everywhere, they are also violated everywhere, and their connection with man’s destiny and his being is not clear. With the Jews that connection is clear, since the laws are given by God himself. But the Jews are in part constricted by culture. The prophets do
preach
that the law will be given to all nations, and, as I’ve written, the Jews were chosen to carry that law. Yet Rome and Greece and Germany and Ireland could only become Jewish, so to speak, by becoming Christian. And then men saw not only that Christ came into the world, but that the very meaning of this world is stamped with Him, redeemer and creator both. For the world too is loved, and made new.
A Book You’re Not Supposed to ReadThe Great Heresies
by Hilaire Belloc; Rock-ford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1991.Belloc is always worth reading, enjoyable and perceptive, but this treatment of heresies—from the earliest Arian heresy, to the catastrophic heresy of Islam, to the seemingly benign, but mortally harmful intellectual heresies of the Modern Age—is a grand and sweeping treatment and condemnation of all things contrary to the true, the good, and the beautiful. As such, it is sure to offend many—a sure sign that it’s right on target.
To the ends of the earth, then, came the word, brought by saints, marauders, plowmen, tyrants, ordinary people, that each human being possesses a measureless dignity, by virtue of his having been created and redeemed by a God of love; not by a philosophical idea, and not by a god bound to a mountainside or river. The Greeks had the wisdom to end slavery, but why lose the temporary economic advantage? The Jews understood why, but lacked the power. The Jews who are called Christians, after a long struggle, did put an end to it; too long a struggle, but triumphant at last. If we believe that it befits a man to enter a burning building to save someone else’s child, it is because we hear the words ringing in our ears still, “Inasmuch as ye have done
it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it
unto me” (Matt. 25:40).
it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done
it
unto me” (Matt. 25:40).
It may offend secularists and those prudes who think that religion ought to be kept behind closed doors, but charity and concern for the poor are integral to our culture today
because
of Christianity. If we build hospitals for the destitute beyond our own lands, with no desire for personal or national profit, and risking life and limb to do it, it is because we retain a trace, a cultural memory of the voyages of Saint Paul, of Boniface martyred by the Germans, of Cyril and Methodius trekking north among the Slavs, of Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, of Gregory the Great seeing blond slaves in the marketplace and, hearing that they were called “Angli,” replying, “
Non Angli sed angeli
,” “not Angles but angels,” and sending missionaries among them, to give them the best he had to give.
16
because
of Christianity. If we build hospitals for the destitute beyond our own lands, with no desire for personal or national profit, and risking life and limb to do it, it is because we retain a trace, a cultural memory of the voyages of Saint Paul, of Boniface martyred by the Germans, of Cyril and Methodius trekking north among the Slavs, of Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland, of Gregory the Great seeing blond slaves in the marketplace and, hearing that they were called “Angli,” replying, “
Non Angli sed angeli
,” “not Angles but angels,” and sending missionaries among them, to give them the best he had to give.
16
That is only one benefit, and not the most important, which the priests and bishops at those early councils conferred upon us, ensuring that Christianity would survive.
Though it is not polite to say so, still it cries out for notice. Hindus do not send holy men into foreign lands to feed the hungry and house the naked; they will not do so for the pariahs in their own land. Buddhists, practicing benevolent detachment from the world, do not do so. Muslims, who conquer by force, and who reject natural law on the grounds that it “fetters” Allah, are required to take care of their own, but they ignore everyone else.
17
All cults of ancestor worship, like Shinto, are too firmly fixed upon the local and the familial to care for people far away. The Jews and Christians would care, because of the God they worship: and they did. If the world speaks of human rights now, and the dignity of the poor, it is because the world has heard of Moses and the prophets—and, summing them up in himself, Christ. Men have come at last neither to love the world nor to despise it simply, but to love its goodness, not as a final end, but as a manifestation of the goodness that is eternal.
17
All cults of ancestor worship, like Shinto, are too firmly fixed upon the local and the familial to care for people far away. The Jews and Christians would care, because of the God they worship: and they did. If the world speaks of human rights now, and the dignity of the poor, it is because the world has heard of Moses and the prophets—and, summing them up in himself, Christ. Men have come at last neither to love the world nor to despise it simply, but to love its goodness, not as a final end, but as a manifestation of the goodness that is eternal.
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