"The nature of this drive [to pull the Christian eschaton from the divine to the immanent] cannot be discovered by submitting the structure of the fallacy to an even closer analysis. The attention must rather concentrate on what the thinkers achived by their fallacious construction. On this point there is no doubt. They achieved a certainty about the meaning of history, and about their own place in it, which otherwise they would not have had. Certainties, now, are in demand for the purpose of overcoming uncertainties with thier accompaniment of anxiety; and the next question would be: What specific uncertainty was so disturbing that it had to be overcome by the dubious means of fallacious imanentization? One does not have to look far afield for an answer. Uncertainty is the very essence of Christianity. The feeling of security in a "world full of gods" is lost with the gods themselves; when the world is de-divinized, communication with the world-transcendent God is reduced to the tenuous bond of faith, in the sense of Heb. 11:1, as the substance of things hoped for and the proof of things unseen. Ontologically, the subtance of things hoped for is nowhere to be found but in faith itself; and, epitemologically, there is no proof for things unseen but again this very faith. The bond is tenuous, indeed, and it may snap easily. The life of the soul in openness toward God, the waiting, the periods of aridity and dulness, guilt and despondency, contrition and repentance, forsakenness and hope against hope, the silent stirrings of love and grace, trembling on the verge of a certainty which if gained is loss - the very lightness of this fabric may prove too heavy a burden for men who lust for massively possessive experience. The danger of a breakdown of faith to a socially relevant degree, now, will increase in the measure inwhich Christianity is a worldly success, that is, it will grow when Christianity penetrates a civilizational area thoroughly, supported by institutional pressure, and when, at the same time, it undergoes an internal process of spiritualization, of a more complete realization of its essence. The more people are drawn or pressured into the Christian orbit, the greater will be the number among them who do not have the spiritual stamina for the heroic adventure of the soul that is Christianity; and the likeliness of a fall from faith will increase when civilizational progress of education, literacy, and intellectual debate will bring the full seriousness of Christianity to the understanding of ever more individuals. Both of these processes characterized the high Middle Ages. The historical detail is not the present concern; it will be sufficient to refer summarily to the growing town societies with their intense spiritual culture as the primary centers from which the danger radiated into Western society at large."
- The New Science of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952, p. 132-133.
(Image rambunctiously bobbed from http://www.thoughtsongod.com/?p=6008)
3 comments:
I'm pretty sure that I have very little idea what it is that he's trying to say here, and yet I'm pretty sure that I disagree with most of it.
Hmmm, wouldn't you love to know what he's trying to say? Kinda helps to know what he's trying to say.
Could I have put that into the post? Maybe, but it would've buried the quote I was interested in. I could explain, but not now, I've got papers to grade.
Why do you distract me so? Fie! fie!
The last bit reminds me of something Dallas Willard wrote in The Divine Conspiracy: "Kingdom rightness respects the soul need of human beings to make their judgments and decisions solely from what they have concluded is best. It is a vital, a biological need. We do not thrive, nor does our character develop well, when this need is not respected, and this thwarts the purpose of God in our creation."
Compare that to "The more people are drawn or pressured into the Christian orbit, the greater will be the number among them who do not have the spiritual stamina for the heroic adventure of the soul that is Christianity; and the likeliness of a fall from faith will increase when civilizational progress of education, literacy, and intellectual debate will bring the full seriousness of Christianity to the understanding of ever more individuals."
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