We can’t replace empiricism, etc. with vibes. At the end of the day, you must have an economic/political program that works. That’s why I ignore leftist slogans like “People over profits”, etc. Maybe I am saying “People over prophets.”
People need prophets. Without vision, the program becomes just another spreadsheet. Prophets give form to the attachments that make economic and political order sustainable.
I’m not against a vision per se but it still must be workable and should respect liberty. But most political visions are statist and often blatantly curtail liberty; in addition, they introduce unintended negative consequences that invite more interventions. To stick with the metaphor, spreadsheets are better than economic disasters.
The decline of the West is personified by Trump. He is a man who surrounds himself with idolatry and demands faith.
Objective truth, scientific search for it and a replacement of faith with examination is far better. That is how the West took the lead with industry, economy and medicine.
To choose myths and faith over those tenets is to choose the dark ages over the renaissance.
Faith and science are NOT in contradiction. This is philosophy 101. Science cannot prove/ disprove the existence of God, and it can only tell you how* to build a nuclear bomb, not whether you should* (the why/ morality/ ethics).
He obviously expects followers to have faith in himself, Donald Trump, and he invokes Christian maxims when addressing Christian audiences, but I think that's a matter of expediency rather than genuine religious conviction on his part. And he clearly does not maintain that Christian faith is a sine qua non for his supporters -- which would leave his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his converted-to-orthodox-Judaism daughter Ivanka, and their three children out in the cold.
Unlike the Norse Gods or European folk tales, the Christian myth never fired my imagination, perhaps because it's Middle Eastern roots make it feel so alien. Give me Tolkien or The Brothers Grimm anyday.
I know almost nothing about Nietzsche but I always assumed he was railing less against the decay of Christianity in the modern world and more against its tenets of the meek inheriting the earth, turning the other cheek and the last shall be first etc. i.e. its praise of losers. The idea that Christianity never actually decayed but was instead co-opted by managerialism reminds me of the way socialism is always socialism until it fails, then it magically becomes something other than socialism.
I think we all agree that it would be wonderful to live again in a world that hasn't been disenchanted by science. I too would like to live in a world infused with a sense of transcendence. Yet there is something very cynical about feigning belief, just to regain something valuable. Or are people here claiming that they actually DO believe, not just in the civilisational benefits of Christianity, but in the Christ story itself?
I'll grant many things that the author claims for Christianity: that we have a body of myth ready to go right out of the box; that our culture and morality are already so pervaded by Christianity that there would be no difficulty in assimilating it again into our lives; the churches that were repurposed for other things could once again become churches; that what is lacking in today's world is something like 'soul', or 'depth', or 'transcendence', or something else it's hard to put one's finger on. Maybe that thing is religion or maybe this feeling that something is lacking could be common to all societies at all times and just part of the human condition.
All the author's claims could be true yet unless you can believe in the Christ story, or at least deceive yourself into thinking you believe it - and I don't and can't - I just don't get it. I would rather press on and look for something that we actually can believe in without pretending to ourselves.
I know Bo views myth as something you don't necessarily have to believe in but rather use to orientate your society. But to me, not being able to believe the myth is not some minor detail or some category error that only the too-literal-minded make.
I think he was probably a Christian. And your point is? That I too should therefore believe in Christ? That I shouldn't like the Lord of the Rings trilogy because its author was a Christian?
No, just that it didn't make sense to say Christian writing doesn't work for you and then say you instead prefer a famously Christian writer. Maybe you're saying you don't like the Bible, but LOTR has some pretty strong Christian themes, so maybe the ideas of Christianity resonate with you more than you realized, whether or not you believe in Christianity.
You're right, if you're truly convinced Christianity isn't true, it's silly to pretend otherwise. On the other hand if you find value or resonance in Christianity and believe there might be something transcendent that's not captured by secularism, then maybe that thing could be Christianity? And if you get to that point, then I think it's totally reasonable to practice Christianity, even if you're only just open to it rather than being convinced or even thinking it's more likely than not.
Ed West is also a Christian writer in as much as he is a Christian who writes. Even though I'm an atheist I don't think it's at all odd that I read his social and political commentary.
What I like best about LOTR are the hobbits with their hairy feet, the forests and the Shires. Any resonances of Christianity passed right over my head.
Regarding transcendance, the fact that I don't find any resonance in Christianity was precisely the point of my comment. I'm not even sure I know what I'm talking about when I use the word 'transcendance'. It may be a word for which there is no referent in the actual world. Perhaps the nearest I can imagine myself coming to transcendance is visualising my family tree and how I'm nestled in there. However, like the feeling of deja vu it quickly vanishes.
Tolkien is an excellent referent precisely because his whole imaginative world is suffused with Christian metaphysics. The fact this can go unnoticed only shows how deeply embedded it is.
But you also touch on something of profound importance I couldn’t address in this piece: Tolkien wasn’t setting Christianity against the older European inheritance, he was fusing them. That’s what makes his vision so powerful — and that’s what we need now: to complete the fusion between Christian transcendence and barbarian fire.
When I said I liked Tolkien's LOTR what I really meant was that I hold a vague image in my mind of Tolkien's world. I have never read any of his books though I've tried once or twice. I found the details didn't live up to the image I had created in my mind and dispelled rather than enriched the magic. I have watched perhaps one of Peter Jackson's films but probably couldn't tell you what it's all about, other than four little people journeying through forests to throw a ring into a volcano, guarded by an evil being whose name now escapes me. I know it's not Voldemort.
You say, 'Tolkien is an excellent referent precisely because his whole imaginative world is suffused with Christian metaphysics. The fact this can go unnoticed only shows how deeply embedded it is'.
Alternatively it could show that I and many other people know nothing about either Christian or Tolkien metaphysics and for that reason they go unnoticed.
Just as I was suggesting the magic in Tolkien is (for me) dispelled by actual contact with the books, so I suspect religion is best viewed out of the corner of one's eye. Looked at head on it just looks ridiculous but when it's hovering, ghost-like, on the periphery of your vision it seems to be hinting at some unseen world within our own, an extra dimension containing depth, meaning and transendance. Yet as with ghosts, I'm sure we are talking here about a psychological need or a trick of the human mind rather than actual ghosts, gods and hidden dimensions.
I know you believe that rationalism has smothered all older ways of seeing and knowing and I certainly don't discount the possibility that I am trapped in my rationalist blinkers and were I to give the kaleidoscope I'm looking through a half-turn, a completely different landscape might reveal itself to me. The danger here is to find precisely what you have been looking for i.e. wishful thinking is not a reliable motivation for getting to the truth. I am aware of how suggestible I am and all it needs is someone I admire to say something is a great diea for me to be halfway to believing it, even if it's nonsense. I feel you should believe what you believe and not burst a blood vessel trying to see things a different way.
Of course, it may be that modern culture and rationalism have rendered us incapable of seeing what is in front of our eyes and what we need is to either study pre-scientific writings or visit some present-day primitive society that might reveal our blind spot. But you are where you are and from where I stand the resurrection and ascension of Christ into heaven sounds no less ridiculous than Muhammed flying white-winged horse from Mecca to heaven via Jerusalem. The reason there used to be a community of believers is because enough people believed. But if all us sophisticates merely 'believe in belief' rather than believing in the actual Jesus story, I can't see the point. We'll be just another bunch of LARPers.
Thanks for engaging in such depth. What I’m advocating is less LARPing than a Durkheimian sense of religion — the way most people have always lived it, without agonising over propositional assent. For most, it is enough simply to believe in and accept Christ.
Would you give Tolkien another try, whether through the books or the films? That ghostly sense you describe ‘out of the corner of the eye’ is exactly what he was capturing: the fusion of Christian transcendence with the older European imagination. It works because the trace of the Cross is still inscribed on the Western soul — not equally in everyone, but still there for now. That’s why Tolkien feels latent and half-familiar even if you don’t consciously register the Christianity in it.
Yes, mainstream Christian clerics preach self-destructive altruism that corrodes the very foundations of Western life. And yes again, a muscular theology of dominion, self-mastery, duty, and sacred bonds of kin and country would be more propitious. But Nietzsche was right: self-destructive altruism is inescapably baked into Christianity. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ urged followers to adhere to a course of strict pacifism -- offering no resistance to physical assault and submitting meekly to extortionate demands. Beyond that, he told them not only to forgive those who wrong them but to love them as well! Furthermore, he told them to refrain from engaging in economically productive activity. Be like the birds, he said, who "neither sew nor reap or store [produce] away in barns"; rather, just be pious and obey his teaching and "all will be given to you." In a nutshell, Christ preached the ethics of hippie-dom.
Jesus’ radical ethics were based on his belief that the world was soon to be replaced by the kingdom of God. He was wrong, of course, and Christianity had to reinterpret and evolve, to the betterment of Western Civilization. Abnegation is not the primary problem with modern Christianity. I fear the “muscular theology” of Christian nationalism and MAGA evangelicals. I wouldn’t advise them to adopt Jesus’ radicalism, but they sure could use a bit of wisdom, humility, and compassion.
For which, if any, major Christian denomination is it now a canon of orthodoxy that the injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount are not to be taken seriously or are to be understood in a way at odds with their plain literal sense?
No major Christian church has ever taught that the Sermon on the Mount should simply be dismissed. What they have always done is interpret it within the whole of Christian theology — balancing the call to mercy and humility with the duties of justice, order, and defense of the Christian community. That’s why medieval thinkers could preach both forgiveness and crusade without seeing contradiction.
How do they reconcile it with capitalism -- or, for that matter, with gainful employment of any sort under any political or social order?
And for any true Christian -- i.e., anyone who believes that Jesus is an alter ego of an omniscient and infallible deity who created the universe and determines the fates of the souls of the departed -- what countervailing considerations can override the plain literal meaning of commands attributed to Christ himself in the gospel of Matthew?
I have yet to meet a Christian—and I have known many—who aspires to live Jesus’ commands literally. The most radical injunctions are not realistic, moral, or wise unless one is on the brink of entering a literal Kingdom of God. No doubt, modern Christians attenuate Jesus’ teachings or assert they are an impossible standard and therefore sinners need to be saved by the sacrifice of God’s son (not something the historical Jesus taught).
MATTHEW CHAPTERS 5 - 7:
“Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear…Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow.”
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
“Love your enemies.”
Contradicting the entire Christian tradition after Paul, Jesus insists that his followers must follow the Jewish law “until heaven and earth disappear”:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven…”
MATTHEW 19: 21 - 24:
“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me…Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew 19: 27-30 link this nearly impossible standard to the fact that Jesus’ followers will be rewarded soon in the Kingdom of God.
I wasn’t referring to official denomination doctrine, but typical Christian interpretation and practice by ministers and people in the pews. I spent my entire youth in Protestant churches and attended Catholic mass occasionally and when they preached or discussed the “difficult teachings” they did not take them literally. They didn’t teach sell all your belongings and give to the poor, or the rich will not inherit the kingdom of God, or do not save for the future. They taught don’t make riches more important than your spiritual life. They didn’t teach accommodate the evildoer, turn the other cheek, do not sue, or give to whomever asks. They taught “be generous and forgiving.” Et cetera. There are monastic traditions that take the teachings literally more or less, but they are uncommon. Are you aware of official doctrine that takes the teachings literally, without equivocation? I think that is unlikely or rare.
I went to Protestant Sunday school as a child but lost faith in Christianity shortly before my 13th birthday and have not regained it in the ensuing 66 years, and I know little of Christian hermeneutics, so I'll take your word for it that few, if any, modern Christian authorities hold that those commandments in the Sermon on the Mount should be obeyed in their plain literal sense. But I don't see how such insouciance can be reconciled with the essential Christian doctrines that: a) Jesus Christ was and is an alter ego of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent deity and was sent into this world to teach mankind how to qualify for eternal and blissful life after death and b) the gospels give a true account of the words and deeds of Jesus in his mortal incarnation.
I am a Christian, but I appreciate that you hit the nail on the head here. Christians are called to altruism to the point of or maybe even past the point of seeming self-destruction. That's not always how things work in practice, but we should always be uncomfortable when we do otherwise, and always be suspicious of anyone preaching Christianity without altruism and self-sacrifice.
The radical ethics of Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet from Nazareth, was predicated on his belief that the evil world was soon to be replaced by the kingdom of God. Jesus was wrong, and his ethics were invalidated. Christians do not follow the radical aspect of Jesus’ teachings, because they are not realistic nor just. Christianity, however, evolved. What started as extreme self-denial matured into an admirable and achievable compassion and a lynchpin of Western Civilization.
Yes, indeed: in a dialogue set forth in Matthew 24 Christ predicted that the final apocalypse would occur within the remaining lifetimes of his contemporaries. In light of which it's a wonder that Christianity didn't evaporate once it became obvious that: 1) no one who could have heard or participated in that or any other dialogue circa 2030 AD could still be alive yet 2) the world had not come to an end. Christian apologists tried to gloss over the difficulty by maintaining that Christ was merely predicting the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which occurred in 70 AD. In the dialogue attributed to him in Matthew 25 Christ did, indeed, predict the destruction of the temple (which had probably occurred before the gospel of Matthew was written), but he went on to predict unmistakably world-ending apocalyptic events that would supposedly occur within the lifetimes of at least some of those listening.
Help me out here: which famous smart-aleck said "I believe because it is absurd"? Never mind: I got the answer by Googling; it was Voltaire.
I think your view is the typical modern Christian take on the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a reasonable ethic. But do you accept that Jesus’ view was much more radical and that he was wrong about the world ending soon?
It’s clear that Jesus meant within his or his disciples lifetimes (Matthew 24). Both Paul and the author of Revelation say the same thing.
I thought the whole point of having a Bible was for God to communicate to humans in terms that are meaningful to them. There is no reasonable meaning of “soon” that means more than 2,000 years. Jesus, like all the apocalyptic prophets of his time, was wrong.
Faith is not antithetical to reason, yet here you are claiming it is. Reading the entirety of the Bible like a literal scientific textbook is called fundamentalism, and they are a tiny minority of Christians.
The majority of American Christians are categorized as “Evangelical” and hold that the Bible is “inerrant.” This is not a tiny minority.
While I don’t believe all human experiences must be rational per se—art, love, meditation are profoundly meaningful, for example—faith and reason are often incompatible when the question pertains to an objective fact.
You're attacking a strawman. I've neither said nor implied that most Christians believe everything in the Bible -- Old Testament and New -- in its literal sense. But how anyone can deem him or herself to be a true Christian yet not feel obligated to obey the instructions in the Sermon on the Mount per their plain literal sense is beyond me.
It’s “beyond” you, because you’re under the presumption that reason can’t be applied to how the Bible is to be interpreted. You’re essentially describing that only a “Christian Fundamentalist” can be a Christian. The Sermon on the Mount has plenty of analogies for example, and thus not a literal scientific textbook of explicit examples that must map on 1:1 in conceivable scenario. Biblical hermeneutics is a field of study. Theology has existed for hundreds of years, and pre-dates even material science. Thus, you must come to understand that for you to declare “A Christian must behave exactly as this says” is to declare faith is not subject to reason.
The plain meaning, in context, of Jesus’ radical teachings is obvious, but they were unsustainable when Jesus’ prophecy failed. The disreputable goal of biblical hermeneutics and theology in this case is to rationalize the contradiction.
Nietzsche had a point, but the faith of the Sermon on the Mount was also the faith of Charles Martel and the Crusades. Western Christianity fused Christian metaphysics and morality with Europe's indigenous inheritance, and there was nothing pacifist about that.
In light of what little I know of relevant history I'd agree that the crusades accomplished little in the long run aside from triggering a great deal of reciprocal carnage and destruction. But it's a good thing for us that our European forebears (or distant cousins) did not obey the ethical instructions in the Sermon on the Mount when dealing with Islamic incursions in the European continent, as otherwise we'd probably be subject to the iron dictates of Islamic law and names like Nietzsche, Darwin, and Einstein would mean nothing to us.
The Crusades effectively forged the West as a coherent civilisation, creating pan-European institutions, identity, and the civilisational consciousness of Christendom. The ultimate failure of some of their objectives could not have been foreseen; in their own time they embodied the fusion of cross and sword that defined the West. To reduce Christianity to pacifism is a modern conceit. Lived Christianity has always contained both sacrifice and dominion.
So by your reckoning, the whole of Western Christianity — Augustine, Aquinas, Bernard, Luther, the Crusades, Christendom itself — wasn’t Christian. That says more about your reductionism than about Christianity.
“Christianity” may contain its entire historical development, but it is very odd indeed that much of it contradicts the teachings of its founder. Most conservative Christians deny the contradiction, for to acknowledge that the Son of God was wrong undermines their faith.
Give me a quote from Augustine, Aquinas, and/or Luther saying that the turn-the-other-cheek commandment in the Sermon on the Mount should be taken with a grain of salt -- i.e., that there are major exceptions that Jesus didn't see fit to mention. And please identify the source, so I can check it.
I don’t get your point about the Managerial Class.
The Managerial Class is the inevitable consequence of having large corporations and of the government managing 40% of GDP. Even if you cut the size of government significantly, you would still have the corporate Managerial Class. It’s a necessary consequence of organizational complexity.
What exactly is the problem here, and what’s the endgame?
Organizational complexity always generates elites, but not all elites are the same. The managerial regime is a particular kind of elite formation — parasitic on the inherited form of Western civilization, and transforming it into something else. You can have elites without this regime, and you can have managers without them ruling.
The problem is that the managerial regime is leading the West from decline to collapse. The endgame is to displace it, and turn decline into resurrection.
I would argue that the two most important corollaries to mythic grammar (and ingredients which will be required for us to revive it) are: strong men, and nurturing, other-centered women.
As a man I can only directly attend to the first one.
It is happening now. Christian Revival is the response to civilizational upheaval, technocratic totalitarianism, and the surging demonic energies erupting into murderousness and the lust of ritualistic sacrifice. The western heritage will not be erased. And Christianity is not fascist... the sanctity of freedom of conscience and defending the freedom to choose the nature of one's relationship with God is core to the faith.
Christianity either got us to this point or was powerless to stop it. Going backwards is doomed to failure. People will dig up Luther or some protestant scholar and deconstruct traditional Christianity, or they'll dig up someone like Hume and deconstruct the whole enterprise. Backwards isn't moving forward.
That said, I remain unconvinced that Christians offer a genuine upgrade from today's managerial overlords. At heart, their pursuit boils down to one thing: trading places at the helm, wielding the same instruments of control and coercion.
"That’s presupposing without argument that reality is non mystical."
That is the very definition of reality...the world or the state of things as they actually exist. There can be an argument about a particular supposition of the 'state of things', but not of reality.
Well again you’re just begging the question that the mystical isn’t actually how things exist. For example I’d argue humans have a rational soul that is immaterial and that angels and demons exist. Now you could say that’s not actually how reality is all reality actually is is matter in motion but you’d have to make an argument how all aspects of reality can be captured using this model
Well if you aren’t going to make arguments and just make assertions than your position isn’t intellectually serious which is fine but when you talk about reality you sound silly
My analogy is that Christianity could well be described as a "symbiotic egregore" whereas something like managerialism would be a "parasitic egregore".
Two sci-fi stories that represent this would be "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons or "World Walkers" by Neil Asher (the latter for "late stage managerialism").
I would much rather live in symbiosis with Christianity, regardless of my religious beliefs, than parasitised by managerialism.
I agree that civilization needs a pre-rational ethos but the Church from its very inception have taught the virgin birth and bodily resurrection to be literal facts, not mere symbolic ideas. Ofc, people grow up in church are initiated into these truths through the rituals and symbolism of liturgy, but that doesn't negate the fact that these symbols express an objective reality.
How many Christians -- that is, people who believe that Jesus was and is the son and alter ego of an omnipotent and omniscient deity who created the universe and judges the souls of the departed and rewards or punishes them accordingly -- take the Sermon on the Mount with a grain of salt?
The crusades ultimately achieved little beyond death and destruction, but it's a good thing for us our European forebears (or remote cousins) flouted the instructions in the Sermon on the Mount when dealing with Islamic intruders in southern and eastern Europe. Passivity, needless to say, is not an effective tactic for resisting jihad.
The Crusades effectively forged the West as a coherent civilisation, creating pan-European institutions, identity, and the civilisational consciousness of Christendom. The ultimate failure of some of their objectives could not have been foreseen; in their own time they embodied the fusion of cross and sword that defined the West. To reduce Christianity to pacifism is a modern conceit. Lived Christianity has always contained both sacrifice and dominion.
You either with Christ or against Him. There’s no I’m with the mythopoetic narrative of Christ because if others follow Christian disciples things work out for society
We can’t replace empiricism, etc. with vibes. At the end of the day, you must have an economic/political program that works. That’s why I ignore leftist slogans like “People over profits”, etc. Maybe I am saying “People over prophets.”
People need prophets. Without vision, the program becomes just another spreadsheet. Prophets give form to the attachments that make economic and political order sustainable.
I’m not against a vision per se but it still must be workable and should respect liberty. But most political visions are statist and often blatantly curtail liberty; in addition, they introduce unintended negative consequences that invite more interventions. To stick with the metaphor, spreadsheets are better than economic disasters.
"People over prophets" is good. So is "No thrones • No Crowns • No Kings" — a slogan for the second major "No Kings" day on October 18, 2025.
The decline of the West is personified by Trump. He is a man who surrounds himself with idolatry and demands faith.
Objective truth, scientific search for it and a replacement of faith with examination is far better. That is how the West took the lead with industry, economy and medicine.
To choose myths and faith over those tenets is to choose the dark ages over the renaissance.
Faith and science are NOT in contradiction. This is philosophy 101. Science cannot prove/ disprove the existence of God, and it can only tell you how* to build a nuclear bomb, not whether you should* (the why/ morality/ ethics).
Excellent points.
He obviously expects followers to have faith in himself, Donald Trump, and he invokes Christian maxims when addressing Christian audiences, but I think that's a matter of expediency rather than genuine religious conviction on his part. And he clearly does not maintain that Christian faith is a sine qua non for his supporters -- which would leave his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his converted-to-orthodox-Judaism daughter Ivanka, and their three children out in the cold.
Unlike the Norse Gods or European folk tales, the Christian myth never fired my imagination, perhaps because it's Middle Eastern roots make it feel so alien. Give me Tolkien or The Brothers Grimm anyday.
I know almost nothing about Nietzsche but I always assumed he was railing less against the decay of Christianity in the modern world and more against its tenets of the meek inheriting the earth, turning the other cheek and the last shall be first etc. i.e. its praise of losers. The idea that Christianity never actually decayed but was instead co-opted by managerialism reminds me of the way socialism is always socialism until it fails, then it magically becomes something other than socialism.
I think we all agree that it would be wonderful to live again in a world that hasn't been disenchanted by science. I too would like to live in a world infused with a sense of transcendence. Yet there is something very cynical about feigning belief, just to regain something valuable. Or are people here claiming that they actually DO believe, not just in the civilisational benefits of Christianity, but in the Christ story itself?
I'll grant many things that the author claims for Christianity: that we have a body of myth ready to go right out of the box; that our culture and morality are already so pervaded by Christianity that there would be no difficulty in assimilating it again into our lives; the churches that were repurposed for other things could once again become churches; that what is lacking in today's world is something like 'soul', or 'depth', or 'transcendence', or something else it's hard to put one's finger on. Maybe that thing is religion or maybe this feeling that something is lacking could be common to all societies at all times and just part of the human condition.
All the author's claims could be true yet unless you can believe in the Christ story, or at least deceive yourself into thinking you believe it - and I don't and can't - I just don't get it. I would rather press on and look for something that we actually can believe in without pretending to ourselves.
I know Bo views myth as something you don't necessarily have to believe in but rather use to orientate your society. But to me, not being able to believe the myth is not some minor detail or some category error that only the too-literal-minded make.
Isn't Tolkien a Christian writer?
I think he was probably a Christian. And your point is? That I too should therefore believe in Christ? That I shouldn't like the Lord of the Rings trilogy because its author was a Christian?
No, just that it didn't make sense to say Christian writing doesn't work for you and then say you instead prefer a famously Christian writer. Maybe you're saying you don't like the Bible, but LOTR has some pretty strong Christian themes, so maybe the ideas of Christianity resonate with you more than you realized, whether or not you believe in Christianity.
You're right, if you're truly convinced Christianity isn't true, it's silly to pretend otherwise. On the other hand if you find value or resonance in Christianity and believe there might be something transcendent that's not captured by secularism, then maybe that thing could be Christianity? And if you get to that point, then I think it's totally reasonable to practice Christianity, even if you're only just open to it rather than being convinced or even thinking it's more likely than not.
Ed West is also a Christian writer in as much as he is a Christian who writes. Even though I'm an atheist I don't think it's at all odd that I read his social and political commentary.
What I like best about LOTR are the hobbits with their hairy feet, the forests and the Shires. Any resonances of Christianity passed right over my head.
Regarding transcendance, the fact that I don't find any resonance in Christianity was precisely the point of my comment. I'm not even sure I know what I'm talking about when I use the word 'transcendance'. It may be a word for which there is no referent in the actual world. Perhaps the nearest I can imagine myself coming to transcendance is visualising my family tree and how I'm nestled in there. However, like the feeling of deja vu it quickly vanishes.
Tolkien is an excellent referent precisely because his whole imaginative world is suffused with Christian metaphysics. The fact this can go unnoticed only shows how deeply embedded it is.
But you also touch on something of profound importance I couldn’t address in this piece: Tolkien wasn’t setting Christianity against the older European inheritance, he was fusing them. That’s what makes his vision so powerful — and that’s what we need now: to complete the fusion between Christian transcendence and barbarian fire.
Some nice ideas.
When I said I liked Tolkien's LOTR what I really meant was that I hold a vague image in my mind of Tolkien's world. I have never read any of his books though I've tried once or twice. I found the details didn't live up to the image I had created in my mind and dispelled rather than enriched the magic. I have watched perhaps one of Peter Jackson's films but probably couldn't tell you what it's all about, other than four little people journeying through forests to throw a ring into a volcano, guarded by an evil being whose name now escapes me. I know it's not Voldemort.
You say, 'Tolkien is an excellent referent precisely because his whole imaginative world is suffused with Christian metaphysics. The fact this can go unnoticed only shows how deeply embedded it is'.
Alternatively it could show that I and many other people know nothing about either Christian or Tolkien metaphysics and for that reason they go unnoticed.
Just as I was suggesting the magic in Tolkien is (for me) dispelled by actual contact with the books, so I suspect religion is best viewed out of the corner of one's eye. Looked at head on it just looks ridiculous but when it's hovering, ghost-like, on the periphery of your vision it seems to be hinting at some unseen world within our own, an extra dimension containing depth, meaning and transendance. Yet as with ghosts, I'm sure we are talking here about a psychological need or a trick of the human mind rather than actual ghosts, gods and hidden dimensions.
I know you believe that rationalism has smothered all older ways of seeing and knowing and I certainly don't discount the possibility that I am trapped in my rationalist blinkers and were I to give the kaleidoscope I'm looking through a half-turn, a completely different landscape might reveal itself to me. The danger here is to find precisely what you have been looking for i.e. wishful thinking is not a reliable motivation for getting to the truth. I am aware of how suggestible I am and all it needs is someone I admire to say something is a great diea for me to be halfway to believing it, even if it's nonsense. I feel you should believe what you believe and not burst a blood vessel trying to see things a different way.
Of course, it may be that modern culture and rationalism have rendered us incapable of seeing what is in front of our eyes and what we need is to either study pre-scientific writings or visit some present-day primitive society that might reveal our blind spot. But you are where you are and from where I stand the resurrection and ascension of Christ into heaven sounds no less ridiculous than Muhammed flying white-winged horse from Mecca to heaven via Jerusalem. The reason there used to be a community of believers is because enough people believed. But if all us sophisticates merely 'believe in belief' rather than believing in the actual Jesus story, I can't see the point. We'll be just another bunch of LARPers.
Thanks for engaging in such depth. What I’m advocating is less LARPing than a Durkheimian sense of religion — the way most people have always lived it, without agonising over propositional assent. For most, it is enough simply to believe in and accept Christ.
Would you give Tolkien another try, whether through the books or the films? That ghostly sense you describe ‘out of the corner of the eye’ is exactly what he was capturing: the fusion of Christian transcendence with the older European imagination. It works because the trace of the Cross is still inscribed on the Western soul — not equally in everyone, but still there for now. That’s why Tolkien feels latent and half-familiar even if you don’t consciously register the Christianity in it.
I may pedal off to the local library and on one of the coming rain-filled evenings of November or December give him another try.
Yes, mainstream Christian clerics preach self-destructive altruism that corrodes the very foundations of Western life. And yes again, a muscular theology of dominion, self-mastery, duty, and sacred bonds of kin and country would be more propitious. But Nietzsche was right: self-destructive altruism is inescapably baked into Christianity. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ urged followers to adhere to a course of strict pacifism -- offering no resistance to physical assault and submitting meekly to extortionate demands. Beyond that, he told them not only to forgive those who wrong them but to love them as well! Furthermore, he told them to refrain from engaging in economically productive activity. Be like the birds, he said, who "neither sew nor reap or store [produce] away in barns"; rather, just be pious and obey his teaching and "all will be given to you." In a nutshell, Christ preached the ethics of hippie-dom.
Jesus’ radical ethics were based on his belief that the world was soon to be replaced by the kingdom of God. He was wrong, of course, and Christianity had to reinterpret and evolve, to the betterment of Western Civilization. Abnegation is not the primary problem with modern Christianity. I fear the “muscular theology” of Christian nationalism and MAGA evangelicals. I wouldn’t advise them to adopt Jesus’ radicalism, but they sure could use a bit of wisdom, humility, and compassion.
For which, if any, major Christian denomination is it now a canon of orthodoxy that the injunctions in the Sermon on the Mount are not to be taken seriously or are to be understood in a way at odds with their plain literal sense?
No major Christian church has ever taught that the Sermon on the Mount should simply be dismissed. What they have always done is interpret it within the whole of Christian theology — balancing the call to mercy and humility with the duties of justice, order, and defense of the Christian community. That’s why medieval thinkers could preach both forgiveness and crusade without seeing contradiction.
How do they reconcile it with capitalism -- or, for that matter, with gainful employment of any sort under any political or social order?
And for any true Christian -- i.e., anyone who believes that Jesus is an alter ego of an omniscient and infallible deity who created the universe and determines the fates of the souls of the departed -- what countervailing considerations can override the plain literal meaning of commands attributed to Christ himself in the gospel of Matthew?
I have yet to meet a Christian—and I have known many—who aspires to live Jesus’ commands literally. The most radical injunctions are not realistic, moral, or wise unless one is on the brink of entering a literal Kingdom of God. No doubt, modern Christians attenuate Jesus’ teachings or assert they are an impossible standard and therefore sinners need to be saved by the sacrifice of God’s son (not something the historical Jesus taught).
MATTHEW CHAPTERS 5 - 7:
“Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.”
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear…Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow.”
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
“Love your enemies.”
Contradicting the entire Christian tradition after Paul, Jesus insists that his followers must follow the Jewish law “until heaven and earth disappear”:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven…”
MATTHEW 19: 21 - 24:
“If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me…Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew 19: 27-30 link this nearly impossible standard to the fact that Jesus’ followers will be rewarded soon in the Kingdom of God.
I don't think you've answered my question.
I wasn’t referring to official denomination doctrine, but typical Christian interpretation and practice by ministers and people in the pews. I spent my entire youth in Protestant churches and attended Catholic mass occasionally and when they preached or discussed the “difficult teachings” they did not take them literally. They didn’t teach sell all your belongings and give to the poor, or the rich will not inherit the kingdom of God, or do not save for the future. They taught don’t make riches more important than your spiritual life. They didn’t teach accommodate the evildoer, turn the other cheek, do not sue, or give to whomever asks. They taught “be generous and forgiving.” Et cetera. There are monastic traditions that take the teachings literally more or less, but they are uncommon. Are you aware of official doctrine that takes the teachings literally, without equivocation? I think that is unlikely or rare.
I went to Protestant Sunday school as a child but lost faith in Christianity shortly before my 13th birthday and have not regained it in the ensuing 66 years, and I know little of Christian hermeneutics, so I'll take your word for it that few, if any, modern Christian authorities hold that those commandments in the Sermon on the Mount should be obeyed in their plain literal sense. But I don't see how such insouciance can be reconciled with the essential Christian doctrines that: a) Jesus Christ was and is an alter ego of an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent deity and was sent into this world to teach mankind how to qualify for eternal and blissful life after death and b) the gospels give a true account of the words and deeds of Jesus in his mortal incarnation.
I am a Christian, but I appreciate that you hit the nail on the head here. Christians are called to altruism to the point of or maybe even past the point of seeming self-destruction. That's not always how things work in practice, but we should always be uncomfortable when we do otherwise, and always be suspicious of anyone preaching Christianity without altruism and self-sacrifice.
The radical ethics of Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet from Nazareth, was predicated on his belief that the evil world was soon to be replaced by the kingdom of God. Jesus was wrong, and his ethics were invalidated. Christians do not follow the radical aspect of Jesus’ teachings, because they are not realistic nor just. Christianity, however, evolved. What started as extreme self-denial matured into an admirable and achievable compassion and a lynchpin of Western Civilization.
Yes, indeed: in a dialogue set forth in Matthew 24 Christ predicted that the final apocalypse would occur within the remaining lifetimes of his contemporaries. In light of which it's a wonder that Christianity didn't evaporate once it became obvious that: 1) no one who could have heard or participated in that or any other dialogue circa 2030 AD could still be alive yet 2) the world had not come to an end. Christian apologists tried to gloss over the difficulty by maintaining that Christ was merely predicting the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which occurred in 70 AD. In the dialogue attributed to him in Matthew 25 Christ did, indeed, predict the destruction of the temple (which had probably occurred before the gospel of Matthew was written), but he went on to predict unmistakably world-ending apocalyptic events that would supposedly occur within the lifetimes of at least some of those listening.
Help me out here: which famous smart-aleck said "I believe because it is absurd"? Never mind: I got the answer by Googling; it was Voltaire.
I'm not doubting you're referencing something, but I don't see such predictions in Matthew 25
Sorry; I cited the wrong chapter. It's in Matthew 24. I've edited my preceding comment to correct the mistake.
I think your view is the typical modern Christian take on the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a reasonable ethic. But do you accept that Jesus’ view was much more radical and that he was wrong about the world ending soon?
His view was certainly radical, but what is soon apparently may mean something different to God than to you and me.
It’s clear that Jesus meant within his or his disciples lifetimes (Matthew 24). Both Paul and the author of Revelation say the same thing.
I thought the whole point of having a Bible was for God to communicate to humans in terms that are meaningful to them. There is no reasonable meaning of “soon” that means more than 2,000 years. Jesus, like all the apocalyptic prophets of his time, was wrong.
Faith is not antithetical to reason, yet here you are claiming it is. Reading the entirety of the Bible like a literal scientific textbook is called fundamentalism, and they are a tiny minority of Christians.
The majority of American Christians are categorized as “Evangelical” and hold that the Bible is “inerrant.” This is not a tiny minority.
While I don’t believe all human experiences must be rational per se—art, love, meditation are profoundly meaningful, for example—faith and reason are often incompatible when the question pertains to an objective fact.
You're attacking a strawman. I've neither said nor implied that most Christians believe everything in the Bible -- Old Testament and New -- in its literal sense. But how anyone can deem him or herself to be a true Christian yet not feel obligated to obey the instructions in the Sermon on the Mount per their plain literal sense is beyond me.
It’s “beyond” you, because you’re under the presumption that reason can’t be applied to how the Bible is to be interpreted. You’re essentially describing that only a “Christian Fundamentalist” can be a Christian. The Sermon on the Mount has plenty of analogies for example, and thus not a literal scientific textbook of explicit examples that must map on 1:1 in conceivable scenario. Biblical hermeneutics is a field of study. Theology has existed for hundreds of years, and pre-dates even material science. Thus, you must come to understand that for you to declare “A Christian must behave exactly as this says” is to declare faith is not subject to reason.
Yada-yada. How do you "interpret" the instruction to turn the other cheek to an assailant?
The plain meaning, in context, of Jesus’ radical teachings is obvious, but they were unsustainable when Jesus’ prophecy failed. The disreputable goal of biblical hermeneutics and theology in this case is to rationalize the contradiction.
Nietzsche had a point, but the faith of the Sermon on the Mount was also the faith of Charles Martel and the Crusades. Western Christianity fused Christian metaphysics and morality with Europe's indigenous inheritance, and there was nothing pacifist about that.
In light of what little I know of relevant history I'd agree that the crusades accomplished little in the long run aside from triggering a great deal of reciprocal carnage and destruction. But it's a good thing for us that our European forebears (or distant cousins) did not obey the ethical instructions in the Sermon on the Mount when dealing with Islamic incursions in the European continent, as otherwise we'd probably be subject to the iron dictates of Islamic law and names like Nietzsche, Darwin, and Einstein would mean nothing to us.
The Crusades effectively forged the West as a coherent civilisation, creating pan-European institutions, identity, and the civilisational consciousness of Christendom. The ultimate failure of some of their objectives could not have been foreseen; in their own time they embodied the fusion of cross and sword that defined the West. To reduce Christianity to pacifism is a modern conceit. Lived Christianity has always contained both sacrifice and dominion.
Pacifism is not the only Christian ethic, but Jesus undeniably insisted upon it in his "turn-the-other-cheek" command in the Sermon on the Mount.
So by your reckoning, the whole of Western Christianity — Augustine, Aquinas, Bernard, Luther, the Crusades, Christendom itself — wasn’t Christian. That says more about your reductionism than about Christianity.
“Christianity” may contain its entire historical development, but it is very odd indeed that much of it contradicts the teachings of its founder. Most conservative Christians deny the contradiction, for to acknowledge that the Son of God was wrong undermines their faith.
Give me a quote from Augustine, Aquinas, and/or Luther saying that the turn-the-other-cheek commandment in the Sermon on the Mount should be taken with a grain of salt -- i.e., that there are major exceptions that Jesus didn't see fit to mention. And please identify the source, so I can check it.
Weird how Catholicism is both the cause of the Wests decline for being so self-destructive and yet also evil for launching the Crusades lmao
I don’t get your point about the Managerial Class.
The Managerial Class is the inevitable consequence of having large corporations and of the government managing 40% of GDP. Even if you cut the size of government significantly, you would still have the corporate Managerial Class. It’s a necessary consequence of organizational complexity.
What exactly is the problem here, and what’s the endgame?
Organizational complexity always generates elites, but not all elites are the same. The managerial regime is a particular kind of elite formation — parasitic on the inherited form of Western civilization, and transforming it into something else. You can have elites without this regime, and you can have managers without them ruling.
The problem is that the managerial regime is leading the West from decline to collapse. The endgame is to displace it, and turn decline into resurrection.
I would argue that the two most important corollaries to mythic grammar (and ingredients which will be required for us to revive it) are: strong men, and nurturing, other-centered women.
As a man I can only directly attend to the first one.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/androgenic-preference-cascade
Thoroughly enjoyed the article.
It is happening now. Christian Revival is the response to civilizational upheaval, technocratic totalitarianism, and the surging demonic energies erupting into murderousness and the lust of ritualistic sacrifice. The western heritage will not be erased. And Christianity is not fascist... the sanctity of freedom of conscience and defending the freedom to choose the nature of one's relationship with God is core to the faith.
Christianity either got us to this point or was powerless to stop it. Going backwards is doomed to failure. People will dig up Luther or some protestant scholar and deconstruct traditional Christianity, or they'll dig up someone like Hume and deconstruct the whole enterprise. Backwards isn't moving forward.
That said, I remain unconvinced that Christians offer a genuine upgrade from today's managerial overlords. At heart, their pursuit boils down to one thing: trading places at the helm, wielding the same instruments of control and coercion.
"Christianity either got us to this point or was powerless to stop it."
The correct answer is the latter. Critical thinking got us to this point.
Humes arguments were post hoc justification for his politics
Modern civilizations require reality...not mysticism.
That’s presupposing without argument that reality is non mystical
"That’s presupposing without argument that reality is non mystical."
That is the very definition of reality...the world or the state of things as they actually exist. There can be an argument about a particular supposition of the 'state of things', but not of reality.
Well again you’re just begging the question that the mystical isn’t actually how things exist. For example I’d argue humans have a rational soul that is immaterial and that angels and demons exist. Now you could say that’s not actually how reality is all reality actually is is matter in motion but you’d have to make an argument how all aspects of reality can be captured using this model
As you wish!
Well if you aren’t going to make arguments and just make assertions than your position isn’t intellectually serious which is fine but when you talk about reality you sound silly
As I said the definition of reality needs no argument. But you are being argumentative over nothing. Drop it!
"But Christianity is not mysticism, my friend."
Sure it is, like most all religions.
"But it's not worth arguing with someone who has so little understanding of the deeper issues of of life."
You are smug and self important...steeped in religious dogma.
The Iliad is a much better foundation than a vicious arid land herder cult bolted onto the obvious parts of Stoicism.
My analogy is that Christianity could well be described as a "symbiotic egregore" whereas something like managerialism would be a "parasitic egregore".
Two sci-fi stories that represent this would be "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons or "World Walkers" by Neil Asher (the latter for "late stage managerialism").
I would much rather live in symbiosis with Christianity, regardless of my religious beliefs, than parasitised by managerialism.
I agree that civilization needs a pre-rational ethos but the Church from its very inception have taught the virgin birth and bodily resurrection to be literal facts, not mere symbolic ideas. Ofc, people grow up in church are initiated into these truths through the rituals and symbolism of liturgy, but that doesn't negate the fact that these symbols express an objective reality.
How many Christians -- that is, people who believe that Jesus was and is the son and alter ego of an omnipotent and omniscient deity who created the universe and judges the souls of the departed and rewards or punishes them accordingly -- take the Sermon on the Mount with a grain of salt?
The crusades ultimately achieved little beyond death and destruction, but it's a good thing for us our European forebears (or remote cousins) flouted the instructions in the Sermon on the Mount when dealing with Islamic intruders in southern and eastern Europe. Passivity, needless to say, is not an effective tactic for resisting jihad.
The Crusades effectively forged the West as a coherent civilisation, creating pan-European institutions, identity, and the civilisational consciousness of Christendom. The ultimate failure of some of their objectives could not have been foreseen; in their own time they embodied the fusion of cross and sword that defined the West. To reduce Christianity to pacifism is a modern conceit. Lived Christianity has always contained both sacrifice and dominion.
You either with Christ or against Him. There’s no I’m with the mythopoetic narrative of Christ because if others follow Christian disciples things work out for society
Christ is King.