The Problem of the Holy

     Folks, if you'll forgive me, one final meditation on how and why the secularist is the last person to deal honestly with the problem of evil. 

     Man's conquest of nature, C. S. Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, often turns out to be some men's conquest of other men, with nature as the instrument.  Tolkien wrote about the same loss of the sense of the holy as instrumental for conquest.  Saruman the White begins by supposing he can use the rings of power to check the advance of Sauron; he ends in massive destruction and deformation of nature.  We last see him as Sharkey, a petty tyrant bullying the hobbits of the Shire into the political organization that would make them most productive -- for his purposes, that is.

     Flannery O'Connor once said that without faith we would govern by compassion, and that compassion leads to the gas chamber.  We'd do well to ask why that is so, and what it might have to do with the insights of Lewis and Tolkien.  That is, we should investigate the motives of those who want to see the world, and man in it, as thoroughly secular, free of the holy.

     What strikes me is that there is a parallel here between the loss of the sense that a nation must be judged by God, and the loss of the belief that things may be holy -- in particular, that a human life may be holy.  If the nations are not under the judgment of God, why then the nations may do what they please.  They may, if they are democratic regimes and can secure the gullible majority, allow the snuffing out of a million unborn children a year; they may begin to produce human life on an assembly line; they may build genetic boutiques for designer offspring.  There really is no limit to the imagination.  All bets are off.  And opponents, whether they like it or not, will simply have to live in a world fashioned by the most debauched, the most ambitious, and the most perverse among them.  They will have no trump card to play against their technocratic masters.  Their principal objections -- difficult to articulate, perhaps impossible if people do not even admit the category of the holy -- will seem quaint and sentimental, even to themselves.  They will be conquered, with a desacralized nature as the instrument.

     Of course, we will justify what we do.  Here is where compassion proves most convenient.  Since we will not have to acknowledge any commandments or prohibitions beyond our capacity to alter, we will fall back upon our own feelings and professed intentions, and these are fluid and can fill any container we wish to fill.  We deceive ourselves if we suppose that the Germans who sent the Jews to the gas chambers were all of them heartless.  Some surely were sadists who derived a sick pleasure from the killing and the torment.  But most, I daresay, were the same ordinary people who might have spent an hour freeing a dog from a trap and binding up its leg, before sending their countrymen to the lethal showers.  It is always so with man.  I cannot think of a single degradation of our culture that has not come into the room dabbing at its eyes with a handkerchief, pleading for mercy, or pleading for the opportunity to bring mercy -- why, joy itself! -- to poor unfortunate others.  Sharkey shows up at the Shire to help.

     Since it is the sense of the holy -- however distorted that may be -- that gives structure to a culture, and that allows it to stand against depredations from within or from without, you must obliterate that sense if you want to reduce a culture to servility, pretending to liberate it from old strictures, while enslaving it to the whims of their new rulers.  These, in our day, are the advertisers, the media elites, and the technocrats, amoral and boundlessly ambitious.  And here is another paradox which the materialist refuses to confront.  After one hundred years of bloodshed and misery brought down upon the heads of ordinary people by materialist ideologues in Berlin, Peking, Moscow, Pyongyang, Hanoi, and elsewhere, and after the collapse of civilization in materialist Western Europe, one might think that the insufficiency of secularism, or rather the bloody danger it poses to human life and well-being, might be acknowledged.  In other words, the secularist wishes at once to deny the holy, and to avert his gaze from the killing fields or the broken homes or just the mindless and joyless despair that are the results of denying the holy.  Unless, as I've suggested, it's not right to say he averts his gaze.  He wants us to avert our gaze.  He knows what he's looking at, and approves of it, because it is the condition of his power.

Comments

[Nick Milne]

Insofar as one can enjoy a meditation on evil and its slovenly barbarism, Professor Esolen, I have enjoyed yours. I don't know what sort of vicious attack you've suffered that it should have moved you to such reflections, but you have my admiration and my prayers, for what little both are worth.

[Beth from TN]

Tony, thank you for this series. You have, as always, articulated several things that have been vaguely in my thoughts but not clear enough to quite grasp, as well as offered new perspectives that make me think. I thank the Lord for your persistent use of the gifts He has given you for His glory.

[Kamilla]

Tony,

Thank you, this is actually quite encouraging. I gladly concur with Beth's post above.

Kamilla

[Margaret]

Thank you for your many profound insights and beautiful way of expressing them. The liveliness and inventiveness of your style never fails to pull one's imagination into the heart of your argument. Chestertonian, come to think of it.

[Benighted Savage]

Anthony Esolen writes:

>>> I cannot think of a single degradation of our culture that has not come into the room dabbing at its eyes with a handkerchief, pleading for mercy, or pleading for the opportunity to bring mercy -- why, joy itself! -- to poor unfortunate others. Sharkey shows up at the Shire to help. <<<

Apparently CURIOUSITY isn't the only thing that can open Pandora's box. A perverted MERCY serves as well? A "single degradation" is all that's needed for that dreadful opening.

I seem to remember Tolkien answering his critics in regards to whether his trilogy was an allegorical account of WWII. A preface to the second edition, I think. He replied with a "No," and then went on to say that if he had tried to mirror our world in his books Saruman would have been able to complete his researches into ring-lore and then make his own ring of power. In an allegorical LOTR, Saruman becomes what he most despises. Perhaps this was Tolkien's gentle way of chastising the Allies for what they had become.

[James Kabala]

"He knows what he's looking at, and approves of it..."

If this is supposed to mean that every atheist is secretly in favor of genocide, I don't think that's quite fair. He would say in his defense that "secularism" is no more monolithic than religion and he can't be held responsible for what other atheists do (the first half of which has some truth in it - many of the groups listed hated each other).

And of course, if there were no God, we would have to live with the truth regardless of the consequences. The post seems to be based on the premise that secularists really know in their heart that there is a God - which I don't believe is the case; I think most of them really do not believe in God.

[Joe Long]

Oh, an atheist needn't be in FAVOR of genocide (as, for instance, a Mohammedan must) - nor must a Communist or a National Socialist favor the gulag or gas-chamber, for that matter. Yet mass-murder is one of the inexorable consequences of his philosophy - whether carried out in sorrow, anger or demonic glee.

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

The atheist would immediately counter with references to the book of Joshua. And, hearing some Christian (though not patristic) readings on it, he may well have a point.

[Tony Esolen]

Wonders,

The atheist may do that if he likes. He can go to Deuteronomy, too. Then he will, I hope, kindly come round to admitting that the long history of Judaism is hardly one of armed oppression of enemies. He will, no doubt, say that Christianity is inherently militaristic. A hundred years ago he sneered that Christianity was inherently pacifistic and effete.

James,

I have some atheist friends who nevertheless do not wish that everyone was an atheist. The secularist knows that the nonexistence of God is not demonstrable. So it never does come to the point of facing an evident fact. The question instead is, "Would it be better or worse for the human race to give up belief in God?" For the westerner, that effectively means, "to give up belief in the God of love revealed by Jesus Christ." And there, I think, he has to face up to history -- as Camus did and would have continued to do. It is not a mark in his favor that secularists come in different varieties, since it has been precisely one of his claims that religion is inherently divisive, and that secularism will efface those divisions (as per that horrible John Lennon song). Nor is it a mark in his favor that one secularist will battle another. All that only makes matters worse for him, because then he is left with nothing to put in the balance against faith, hope, and charity (as opposed to scientific rationalism, a vague optimistic trust in progress, and state-mandated alms). But I wasn't thinking of the rotten things that one secularist nation did to another. We don't even have to go there. All we have to do is to consider what Russian secularists did to Russians, German secularists did to Germans, Chinese secularists did to Chinese, and on and on -- not forgetting the softer but still lethal harm done to Swedes by Swedish secularists, etc.

I will write about this some more.... I think that "secular culture" is a contradiction in terms, and that secularism, by its very nature, possesses no means whatsoever for uniting a people across the generations. Consider the meaning of the word "secular": it binds people to the passage of time. In a deep sense secularism is a culture-of-death, or an anticulture. It can borrow from religion for awhile -- as in the quasi-religious and generally innocent patriotic celebrations in America, generations ago. But that can't last without the support of the real thing, religious faith. Think of the pathetic attempts by secularists to celebrate Darwin Day: these are not celebrations but petty shots at believers, like the lizard-signs that some secularists put on the back of their cars, with "Darwin" written within them, to twit Christians. Gosh, without Christians, they'd lose all their parasitic fun.

[Steve Nicoloso]

A hundred years ago he sneered that Christianity was inherently pacifistic and effete.

Alas, and only more so today, but her critics even more.

[Tim]

Professor Esolen,
thank you for your essays; they are, as always a pleasure to read and contemplate. I read this "final" one just after I'd finished reading Hillaire Belloc's "The Great Heresies." (here's a link to the last chapter, "The Modern Phase" for those interested) I imagine you've read it before but it was the first time for me and it, along with your article, were quite powerful and predictive (e.g., predicting a future - he wrote in 1938 - rising of "Mohammedanism" to challenge the Church and western civilization and predicting the anti Church west that exists today). Your article jives with his writing vis-a-vis describing the secular cultures attack upon the holy or as Belloc put it, the atheist's attack to destroy the Church. Such attack he called "the Modern Phase" (the current attack upon the Church) and, in a rather shocking statement of the obvious, the preferred the name for this enemy of the Church, the "anti-Christ."

Belloc points out one of the social fruits of the attack against the Church and the taking over of society by the atheists would be, as you point out with Sharkey's behavior in the Shire, slavery.

One of the moral fruits he highlights of the swing away from God would be, as you allude to with Flannery's thoughts, the institutionalizing of cruelty, even though it begins with pronouncements of doing the best for all. Flannery's thoughts resonate with me also as I've come to see that, in this world, we must start with justice first, then add mercy; we can't do it the other way around as moderns/secularists attempt to do (Belloc also pointed out their contempt for justice). This thought first became clear in my mind when I observed the two parenting styles in action at my local playground (with my own toddler); the compassion-first crowd raised monsters; the justice-first crowd citizens. I chose then (and with the wisdom that comes from being a former teacher!) that I'd raise my son with justice-first, followed by ample mercy. He is complimented on his behavior (and compassion!) all the time. It's been interesting, though, with some of our neighbor kids who've been raised via the supposedly more compassionate method; I've had to teach my boy how to counter kicking, hitting, and spitting!

Thanks again Professor.

[Clifford Simon]

Gosh, without Christians, they'd lose all their parasitic fun.

The other day some preachers of brimstone stood at the plaza of my campus--- these preachers appear to be frequenting us month-to-month. This time they were joined by some students from the Atheist Club. The students wore a banner over their shirts that read, "Smile! There's no Hell!"

Why, come to think of it, would one smile about that? Can one be so naive as to think that every issue of justice will be forever rested, before one's personal death? Will one smile about what he knows will be the state of things when he dies, with no hope of just decrees (infernal though they may be) in the world to come?

Reminds me what Freud noted about a man who borrowed his neighbor's bucket and returned it broken. "I didn't borrow your bucket. It was broken when I borrowed it. It wasn't broken when I returned it." It's a behavior called reflexive opposition.

[Tim]

Oops,
that should have been ...

"Such attack he (Belloc) called "the Modern Phase" (the current attack upon the Church) and, in a rather shocking statement of the obvious, he preferred the name for this enemy of the Church, the "anti-Christ."

and ...

"One of the moral fruits he highlights of the swing away from God would be, as you allude to with O'Connor's thoughts, the institutionalizing of cruelty, even though it begins with pronouncements of doing the best for all. O'Connor's thoughts resonate with me also as I've come to see that, in this world, we must start with justice first, then add mercy; we can't do it the other way around as moderns/secularists attempt to do (Belloc also pointed out their contempt for justice).

No, I'm not on a first name basis with Flannery O'Connor (RIP)!