Our strange civilization
A cluster of recent experiences have got me thinking about the strangeness of our Western civilization, and made me look differently at the Church’s participation in it.
First: reading about evolutionary theory of sex, the gist of which suggests that early hominids, including homo sapiens, might have lived in relatively small groups, engaging in various kinds of sexual experiences, sharing parenting. Certain indigenous peoples around the world manifest this kind of pattern even in the modern era. (Source: Sex at Dawn)
Second: traveling to China, reading about its control over family planning (source: Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother), contemplating our own family made possible through two adoptions; witnessing different attitudes and practices among families.
Third: thinking about indigenous American cultures after a trip to Plymouth, MA, home of the annual Day of Mourning, which recalls the way that European incursion into the Americas led to hard times for many native peoples.
These experiences have led me to think about the way Western civilization is built upon a number of convictions about family, property, civility, polity, war and aggression, and so on. And since the Church is so intertwined with Western civilization, I can see how those who decry the evils of that civilization (racism, misogyny, constriction of various kinds of freedoms, etc.) want to point a finger at the Church.
Some challenging questions: why do we promote monogamy? why do we have private property? why do we build churches? what is “natural” for human beings? What is the proper relationship between Christianity and culture, especially in this age when we are so attuned to the sins of the Western tradition?
My hypothesis is that we must not conflate Christianity and Western civilization, because worship of Christ is more fundamental than any civilization. Of course it grew out of a history which was governed by a Near Eastern cultural tradition, but it took root in the Roman Empire and thus grew along with the historical trajectory beginning in Rome and the subsequent “West.” But in this age of globalization we must remind ourselves that Christianity is decidedly not a Western phenomenon; its home is Asian. It is possible to disentangle, for example, Xavier’s preaching and Portuguese colonialism. Yes, one was related to the other, but they had different aims and different meanings. We must disentangle Christianity from Western civilization, both because Western civilization is changing and because Christianity must become more African, Asian, and indigenous. Thus we must tread very softly when, for example, we talk about the relationship between the gospel and family structures. Most of the world does not look like the modern American nuclear family.
What of sex, then, if civilization is changing? I continue to think that the root challenge of the gospel is summarized in Jesus’ parting command to the disciples: “love one another as I have loved you.” I imagine the early development of monogamy as a particular focusing of symbolic behavior: “I am for you and no other.” Jesus’ words to the disciples name this impulse as reflecting the way God loves. Far from being a way of treating a woman as property, it reins in a man’s “natural” tendency toward promiscuous sex and adds meaning to the unique sexual relationship. Marriage as a public act then sacralizes it in a public way: it is a statement that one intends to wed the other as an icon of Christ.
There is nothing “natural” about monogamy, any more than about Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, Hopkins’ poetry, or Gaudí’s architecture. I’m less interested in what’s natural and more interested in the ways we act in love. Civilizations can be built on power: they are not always about love and justice. But Christianity, if it is to be worthy of its name, must always be rooted in love. It is more fundamental than any civilization, and more radical in its call to imitate Christ.
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Far from being a way of treating a woman as property, it reins in a man’s “natural” tendency toward promiscuous sex and adds meaning to the unique sexual relationship.
And, because sex makes babies, it makes men take responsibility for their offspring, which is of considerable help to women in most cases.
In his book, ‘Men and Marriage,” George Gilder wrote: “The crucial process of civilization is the subordination of male sexual impulses and biology to the long-term horizons of female sexuality. The overall sexual behavior of women in the modern world differs relatively little from the sexual life of women in primitive societies. It is male behavior that must be changed to create a civilized order … In creating civilization, women transform male lust into love; channel male wanderlust into jobs, homes, and families; link men to specific children; rear children into citizens; change hunters into fathers; divert male will to power ino a drive to create. Women conceive the future that men tend to flee; they feed the children that men ignore.”
In the New Testament, St. Paul is prevented from going Eastward by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit turned St. Paul around. That is an indication on where God wants the Church.
Yes, the Church is very much tied to Western Civilization. Hillaire Belloc said, “The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith”. He is right! and you sir, are wrong. Terribly misguided.
My teacher was Archimandrite Boniface Luykx, a liturgical expert that set the groundwork for Vatican II, fluent in 14 languages and could read 5 more, photographic memory, well read in Christian original manuscripts. On top of that, a holy man. He saw clearly that Christianity enculturated Hellenism. Christianity grew up and was formed by Hellenization. He was fond of constantly quoting Georges Dumezil who pointed out the Trifunctionality of the Indo-European races and how this formed Christianity. Greece is central and the foundation of Western Culture. And as Greece is the foundation of Western civilization it is also the heart of Christianity. Take out this, and you destroy Christianity.
Furthermore, St. Peter said, “Supplement the Faith with Arete”. Arete is the signal characteristic of Hellenism. St. Peter, first Pope, said this.
Third, I want to point to Prof. Jerry Dell Ehrlich’s book, Plato’s Gift to Christianity:The Gentile Preparation for and the Making of the Christian Faith. It was Plato that formed the intellectual culture of Hellenism that pervaded the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. Thru the conquests of Alexander, the Jews, in Palestine and in the Diaspora, were all practically Hellenized.
Your whole thesis is flawed and misguided. The vehicle of Christianity is Western Culture and civilization. The Home of Christianity is Hellenism. Christianity is a Greek religion; it is a European religion. “The Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith”.
What about the Syro-Malabar Church, then, or the Maronite or Melkite Churches? All Catholic, none European.
Maronite and Melkite Churches developed under the culture of Hellenism. Where they are situated, they were under the Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, for the longest of time.
If you look at the Nestorian Churches or the monophysite churches, they are not orthodox.
Christianity is based on “ortho-doxa”, right belief. The systems of thought to come to Truth is based on Hellenic/European thought which is linear and black and white. Asian thought is syncretic, opposite of Western thought. Logos, reason, is specifically, integral to European thought. We think differently. Most of the errors originated in the East and most of those errors were settled by Greeks.
The concepts of the immortality of the soul, the Trinity, the dual nature of Christ, and some others, are specifically Greek and not Hebrew.
The Jews rejected Christ. The Greeks accepted Him.
Why?
Jews like Andrew, Peter, Paul, James and John? Or Jews like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea?
Greeks like those at Athens? Or Celsus?
Or maybe individuals, and not faceless abstractions, reject or accept Christ.
In general, the Jews rejected Christ. In the Hebrew/Jewish mindset, there is a gulf between God and man. There is no crossover. The Semitic mind is set on absolute absolutes. They have a very strict monotheism.
On the other hand, the Greeks have a concept of Hercules and Achilles—half-gods, half men. Socrates said, “Concept precedes knowledge”. What is ingrained in Greek thought is the Golden Mean. It is ensconced at the Temple of Delphi where it was written “Nothing too much”. The Golden mean is integral to Greek thought and it is defined as the middle between the extremes or where the extremes meet.
Jesus Christ is that Golden Mean, where the extremes meet. The Greeks accepted Christ, the Jews rejected him. When Christ alluded to Him being God, the Jews in the Gospels turned up their noses. Yes, a tiny smidgeon of people believed him.
Matthew, Ch. 21
“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”
The word ‘nation’ is singular. Jesus talks of it being ‘taken away’ and given to somebody else.
Apostolos Makrakis points out that the concept of the Trinity is a mean, a middle. He points out that it is the mean between strict Semitic monotheism and the polytheism of the gentiles.
This idea, or law of nature, is central to Christianity. Destroy that, you destroy Christianity. The idea of the laws of nature are also integral to Western culture and civilization. St. John outs Christ as the Logos. The Logos is the laws of nature.
But a half-god is exactly what Chalcedon said Jesus is NOT.
And the same logic Chalcedon used about the nature of Christ applies to the Trinity.
These are not half-way measures between other, pre-existent, ideas. They are not compromises. They break the mold. They insist that God’s relationship to the things of this world is not the same kind of thing as the relationships between the things of this world. To claim that Christology and Trinitarian theology are natural fits in ANY earthly system, let alone the Greek, is to completely misunderstand and misrepresent the history of Christian doctrine. We had to change the meanings of the words to come up with anything approaching adequate and, even then, Lateran IV insisted that anything we say is still more inadequate than adequate.
brettsalkeld, did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?
Wow. I fully recognize that JC is fully God and fully man. At its essence, it is the same metaphor, i.e. mixing, i.e. a combination, etc. Achilles and Hercules were the Golden mean. So is Christ.
I beg to differ with your dismissal that Christology and Trinitarian theology fit an earthly system. I already pointed out that Archimandrite Boniface, who is more learned than you, pointed out Georges Dumezil and the trifunctionality concept. Second, did you know that Plato had a trinity of gods, nous, demiurge, world soul? Christianity is Platonic.
I point to my recent article Macrocosm/Microcosm in Doric Thought
This should help. Most of the Church Fathers were Platonists.
I’m not sure what I said that made you think I was in a foul mood. I’m feeling fine, thanks.
But regardless of how I woke up, Chalcedon is very clear: “Without mixture.”
In the New Testament, St. Paul is prevented from going Eastward by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit turned St. Paul around. That is an indication on where God wants the Church.
That is an indication of where God wanted St. Paul to go. It says nothing about the Church.
That sounds more like a post-hoc rationalization with creaky late 19th and early 20th century ideological foundations than something more solidly based. The Church of the East (monophysite is now fairly widely understood to be inaccurate – miaphysite is preferred, and there is an orthodox understanding of miaphysitism, and consequently there has been a general retrenchment from polarizations that were historically guided more by political necessity than metaphysical necessity) was a huge branch of Christendom up unto the time of the Mongol (and especially late Mongol, Timurid) invasions. The Church of the East probably contributed more martyrs than any other branch of Christendom until the 20th century. And the Greeks had their own share of propensity towards errors; each culture brings its own propensity towards errors, with its own cognitive and spiritual blindspots that make resolving them ad intra more difficult.
We must disentangle Christianity from Western civilization, both because Western civilization is changing and because Christianity must become more African, Asian, and indigenous.
Is it possible to disentangle Christianity from civilization itself (or from some other social construct) and be left with some pure sense of Christianity? Or must Christianity always be situated in and interwoven with the entities of time and place?
I think the Incarnation tells us that Christianity will always exist as “entangled” in a certain culture. And the fact that the Incarnation continues in eternity would indicate that cultures will be finally redeemed rather than destroyed.
On the other hand, I think the Church’s “entanglement” with Western culture shows that Christianity can incarnate itself anywhere. As Tim points out, it is an Asian religion. Very early on, it expressed itself in Western forms (say, Greek philosophy). That isn’t evidence that it can’t be incarnated in contemporary Africa or Asia, but rather evidence that it can.
I agree with Brett. It’s important to recognize that Christianity need not be European. A good example is the Vatican’s desire to beatify Paul Xu Guangqi along with Matteo Ricci in order to show that Christianity can be authentically Chinese, rather than a European graft onto Chinese society. It seems to me to be a parallel situation to that faced by the apostles, discerning whether one had to be Jewish in order to be Christian. Their answer was highly nuanced: “no, but you have to accept our view of some ritual practices.” A relationship with God through Christ is primary; a relationship with other Christians follows, meaning that a Christian must be in communion with the Church that has part of its history in Europe. But importantly, it also has part of its history in Ethiopia, in India, in the Near East, and so on. (Vincent de Paul is supposed to have said that Christ promised the Church that it would continue to eternity, but said nothing of Europe.)
“love one another as I have loved you.” I imagine the early development of monogamy as a particular focusing of symbolic behavior: “I am for you and no other.” Jesus’ words to the disciples name this impulse as reflecting the way God loves. Far from being a way of treating a woman as property, it reins in a man’s “natural” tendency toward promiscuous sex and adds meaning to the unique sexual relationship.
You seem not even to recognise the contradiction in what you write here.
I would add to what you say that it PRIORITIZES that “unique sexual relationship” and portrays all other forms of love as being inferior to it. “I am for you and for no other,” means that fraternal and maternal and paternal love are considered lesser; it means that the monastics are WRONG to warn against “particular friendships.”
You and almost all other “happily married heterosexual men” writing here and considering themselves “traditional Catholics” don’t understand that the ancient Church–the Church that Christ seems to explicitly license–considered “eunuchs” for the “Kingdom’s sake” to be SUPERIOR to what the Hindus where I live call the “grihastha state.” Almost all the great religious traditions of the world agree with Christ and the Hindus, and feel that the “grihastha state” is an IMPEDIMENT to spiritual growth.
You have made an absolute idol–a virtual fetish–out the connubial state.
Digby, I think your argument is with scripture, then. Both the OT and NT use the analogy of marriage to describe God’s relationship to his people (Hosea, Isaiah, the author of Ephesians are good examples). Further, consider the inclusion of the Song of Songs in the canon. Both Jewish (esp. Rabbi Akiba) and later Christian (esp. Bernard of Clairvaux) saw the description of that erotic love as the supreme statement of God’s love for humanity. (Interestingly, nowhere is the relationship of the lovers described as marital, though clearly it is erotic.)
As a priest in one of my favourite films (Jesus de Montreal) says, “You can do ANYTHING with ‘sacred scripture.’”
However, apart from that, please notice that every single one of your allusions is to the Jewish “Old Testament.” The “Jesus Movement put far more stock in celibacy and chastity (probably as a result of Essene influence).
And the language of mysticism–in almost all religious traditions, worldwide–is concerned with transgressive love–not the kind of “grihastah,” (“householders’”) love which ends one up bound down to worldly and materialistic considerations (perfectly all right, of course, for the Jewish religion, which, at least in Christ’s time, mostly could not imagine an “afterlife,” let alone a human nature transformed by spiritual experience.
“For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
‘For this reason a man shall leave (his) father and (his) mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.” (Eph 5: 29-32).
I don’t doubt that the early church thought celibacy superior. Perhaps the Essenes are the antecedents, but in the Greek world more likely it was neoplatonism and Stoicism. Celibacy is certainly a form of lived discipleship, but so is marriage. And the author of Ephesians, following the prophetic literature, thought it so exalted a vocation as to compare it to the relationship between Christ and the Church. The Hellenistic church lost sight of that profound truth, and it took a millenium to recover its meaning in declaring marriage a sacrament. We’re still figuring out what it means, just scratching the surface of the mystical meaning of marriage.
Digby:
It seems entirely reasonable that the singular spiritual path, dedicated only to seeking God, really is superior to the traditional householder’s life and its continual striving for food, property, power, or whatever else seems necessary to maintain the household. Since the emergence of monasteries and gurus, young adults have been presented with this choice: life of seeking or family life. The lucky ones who lived long enough to be widowed or at least to outlive their children’s childhoods had a second chance at a spiritual path. Before modern times, many of them who had the means opted to enter a monastery late in life, and the Church allowed married partners to separate by mutual agreement late in life and enter religious orders. St. Peter himself appears to have left his married life to follow Jesus.
Today, many more people live into old age, and we have fewer children to support. Both men and women in wealthy urban situations have vastly more opportunities and motivation to be highly educated, to contribute equally and uniquely to a relationship’s spiritual development. We have a substantial body of accessible literature like Passionate Marriage and Transformation through Intimacy. This opens up possibilities that the Church Fathers could not have imagined: Rather than an impediment to spiritual growth, consciously engaged monogamous relationship itself is a spiritual practice and a potent driver of spiritual growth. It’s amusing to think about how Church tradition would be different today, had Peter and his wife participated in a Marriage Encounter group and couples therapy for a few years.
My dear Frank, if what you were saying were true of the Church in the West, then it would have absolutely no problem with non-erotic, sanctified friendships between folks of the same sex–which it very clearly DOES, considering its embarrassment with much of the language of mysticism, which almost always employs the figures of transgressive love, and NEVER (except among Jews and other Semitic peoples, as mentioned above). Indeed, I’d posit that the reason St. Paul WAS able to use spousal love as a figure of divine love is because both he AND his Saviour had already down-graded it in importance–reducing it to another form of transgressive love-making; St. Paul would have known that the Platonists and the Essenes would have been repelled by his analogy.
Didn’t complete my sentence above:
…and NEVER…relies upon language describing the all-too “respectable” connubial state.
We already have a Christianity formed by another culture and that is Protestantism, or fundamental Protestantism.
I point to the Puritans who wanted to do away with Christmas and all of its trappings. The Easter egg, the Christmas tree, kissing under the missile toe, the blessing of necks, etc, are all for them “pagan” infiltration of a “pure christianity”. Many fundamental Protestants have problems with our statues, icons and praying before them!
Protestantism is a Judaized Christianity. Protestantism takes a lot from the Old Testament. It was the Protestants that took up the Old Testament and preached from it a lot. This has affected the formation of Protestantism. Here is an historical example of what the original post is promoting—that Christianity can fit any culture or that Christianity can be molded to any culture. Now, I have read the canons of the Ecumenical councils. Not many Catholic laity have done so. In there, is several canons anathemitizing anybody that judaizes the Faith. As you can see with fundamental Protestantism that did enculturate Judaism, it is very sorely opposed to Roman Catholicism and claim that it is full of “pagan” practices.
Well, of course it is full of “pagan” practices. Transpose the word “pagan” with “European” and then you can see why. The curse word “pagan” is really the word “European” and they wish to sanitize Christianity of any European/Greek culture and seek to make Christianity into a Jewish thing. Many of the Anglican critics of Puritainism and Scottish Presbyterianism mocked them as psuedo-Jews.
Since Christianity is a New Covenant, every thing was changed. It has a New Language, Greek. It has new Festivals called Christmas and Easter. It has new day of holy day called ‘Sunday’. All things are new. Under the New Covenant, it took on New Clothes, a New Culture. Hellenism is the culture of Christianity.
“How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God.” by Richard Hopkins is a book that decries the “paganisation” of Christianity, been corrupted by Greek philosophy.
We have a problem. As you can see a Christianity that is Judaized is completely opposite of a European Christianity. If orthodox traditional Christianity is attacked by enculturation of Judaism, how is orthodox traditional Christianity survive other enculturations of other different cultures?
Shall we give up our Statues and Icons?
Hellenism is not the only culture of Christianity. And those anti-Judaizing points have, as we know, their own set of problems that are not to be elided….
And Catholicism preached plenty from the Old Testament. The Book of Psalms and the Song of Songs were probably the most expounded-upon texts in Western Christianity in the Middle Ages.
PS: The attempt to create a black-and-white chasm between the categories of “European” and “Jew” is particularly troubling.
The original post is opening a can of worms.
Culture is very important. Socrates in the Republic, demonstrates how culture defines politics. Let me repeat: Culture defines politics. Culture also defines religion. Now, you may laugh, but Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist theorist, came to the same conclusion. He saw that if Marxism is to succeed, it had to change the culture before it changed the politics, or rather, change the culture and politics will change itself.
You’re screwing with things that are huge, intricate, and beyond most of our comphrensions. Roman Catholicism works great, as is, in the Philippines which I have observed numerous times. Vietnamese Catholicism worked as far as I know.
Archimandrite Boniface, a Norbertine originally and falling asleep as a Catholic, pointed out in his lectures the difference between the Greek East and the Latin West. The liturgical language of Rome for the first 400 years was Greek. His teaching was when it changed into Latin, the character of Christianity changed in the West. The differences of Eastern and Western Christianity is due to the culture. Christianity in the West undergone Romanization. Ultramontanism was developed by Spanish Catholics that thought in extremes. Ultramontanism is anathema to Orthodox Christians of the East.
You know I have major problems with Protestants in fighting their attacks on the so-called ‘paganism’ of Catholic Christianity. They attack Plato and anything to do with Hellenism. Now, I find Catholics that are going to the other extreme in trying to multiculturalize Christianity. The Church is alreadly suffering wounds of disunity. Do we really need more disunity?’
The work of Archimandrite Boniface and his concern was the unity of the Eastern and Western Christianity and healing that schism and bringing raproachmant to the both churches. We can’t even do this, but we are running to cause, as I see it, more problems. Don’t we have enough on our hands. We can’t even fix our schism with the East. The first and most important thing is heal the schism between West and East. We must combine in a healthy atmosphere the blessings of the Greaco-Roman heritage of Christianity.
Which “East”? There is more than one. Relations between Rome and the Oriental Churches have made substantial progress. The Churches of the Byzantine heritage have their own cultural conflicts, too.