who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.
Hebrews 11:33-34
A digression.
One of the reasons why I write so much about theology is because I feel that the only force that can stop the decline of the West is the resurrection of religion. And I know how far-fetched and idiotic it can appear to many.
One of the common tropes among conservatives is the notion that as a religion liberalises it dies. Protestant Churches which have gone liberal are dying. I'm not saying this as a mark of triumph, simply as an observation of fact. The same thing has happened to the Catholic Church, but as this blog has written about in the past, the collapse of the Catholicism in the 1960's could not have happened without the help of "traditional" religion which undermined its foundations. The Sixties revolution worked because the faith, much like the French Army in the 1930's, was strong on paper but otherwise weak.
What I'm trying to get at is the notion that any deviation from orthodoxy, either in Left or Right forms is going to undermine the faith. Bad theology means bad religion, which means weak religion. Priests and prophets that preach rubbish are not going to get the support of God. Grace, my good fellows is the motive force of belief and when you take it away, belief withers. The Church does not fade because it is liberal or conservative, it fades because it is wrong. That's why, in ye olde days, the prophets of restoration preached the notion of getting back on track.
These thoughts came to me once again after reading a recent post by Rod Dreher. Fleeing the Collapsing Imperium. It and the Benedict Option are works which are in keeping with
I think Dreher is accurately seeing what is coming to the faithful, but his Christianity--which is quite mainstream--is unable to do anything to stop it. It expects, at best, to run away and find refuge or to be left alone. At worst, it expects a test of wills where the Christian expects to take a continually beating--sustained by the faith--till evil exhausts itself. The virtue is in the suffering. The hope is that there is always a place to escape to.
This type of Christianity is not a Christianity that can be squared with the traditions of our forefathers. If we regard the Church as diachronic, in other words, as existing throughout time, our forefathers must look upon our modern Christianity as something foreign to their understanding of it.
The Sieges of Vienna and Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, the Morean Wars, could never have been fought by a modern Christianity. Dreher--and the theologians upon which his religion is based--would have run away, or stood by and taken the punishment from the Ottomans. The other problem with this modern approach is that it deligtimises any legitimate form of defence against evil--say Western powers in WW2--while all enjoying the benefits of their sacrifice.
How to evaluate this theologically?
If we accept the notion that Grace, Goodness and Faith are somehow correlated we got to conclude that something has gone badly astray in the Christian religion from the times of our forefathers. In the Age of Christian Warfare the faith was strong, in the Age of Christian pacifism the faith is week. I can't prove the link, I only note the correlation.
I suspect that the reason why we live in a faithless age is because God may not be pleased with a soy Christianity.
Note: I'm not advocating anyone do anything stupid, given the inflammatory times. This post is meant to provoke some THOUGHTS on the relationship between legitimate defence and the Christian Religion, not to provoke some armed insurrection.
There is a similar question in the politically serious nationalist (in the noble sense of the word) in Europe (I am French). The good one remind thst without political independance, you can not change anything. If secular nation of Europe need to leave the eu to exist her bad policy (both in the economy and morality), we need a similar move. Basically, religion is not a private matter only. Our faith is public, political and legal(as in there is a long tradition of legal theory that is Christian). Mwe must not be ashamed of integralism. It does not mean we must ask for it right now(conversions need to happen before). It does not mean we must be ultramontain or for all states to be mere fiefdom of catholicism. (let's not make the caricatures of catholicism true).
ReplyDeleteAt least it is how I think it. How I try to work with the world and people different from me but with which I can work.
That is actually my favorite Caravaggio and has been since I saw it many years ago in person.
ReplyDeleteI think something that is driving the increase in interest in books by John Eldredge, Protestant, and Jacques Phillipe, Catholic, is that they show a living Christianity. It is an orthodox one which means nominally conservative, but the point is it’s about a Jesus Who is real and meant what He said about abundant life, overcoming the world, and that without Him we can do nothing.
I think that why we learn so much about Pharisees and Sadducees in the Bible is not just to record events but to show the two perversions of the true religion that are most common, briefly and perhaps over simply, one side adds to what God says and the other takes away what God says. Both are disconnected from God although ironically Pharisees come off better than you think in total, Jesus still says to obey them if they have legitimate authority and we get a sympathetic Pharisee in Nicodemus, and no sympathetic Sadducees appear.
We aren’t fighting because we aren’t alive. The late unpleasantness in the US and I have seen many of my friends and acquaintances on Facebook start running whiteguilt.exe full time and not just the usual suspects. The images of people kneeling everywhere has a religious and political significance as submission to an ideology that has almost nothing to do with the actions of some idiot cop in Minneapolis.I think these people are dying for a social acceptance, even sense of being on the winning side, even life itself. I’m talking Christian people. The only guy fighting is an acquaintance of mine who is a Methodist preacher but used to be a very combative military man from the Southern tradition of such. If you don’t have a sense of life and victory in Christ you will search for it elsewhere even if you cloak it as your “Christian duty”.
Bonhoeffer has this quote from his last days prison work that the liberals love "religionless Christianity". He was thinking of a world and a church much like the one we find ourselves in I think. Yes, there is still something called "The Church", but it is so inwardly divided and outwardly scorned that is has no legal authority. It always have the power of the gospel, which is promised to always be present. It has the use of the loosing key. But legal authority, the binding key, has gone missing. That is what I think Bonhoeffer meant by religionless, the lack of binding rituals and piety. I often compare what a pastor of 1910 would have taken as his job verses the expectations of today. The call in 1910 was something that someone from the 6th century would have recognized. The call of today I'm not so sure. The effect of religionless Christianity is the elimination of the church as a real institution. It is still there. The Word and Sacraments are still present. But a National Bishop can speak and it means nothing. Bonhoeffer felt that this would be the case until the end. Again, these were musings on his death bed essentially, and he held out some hope in it. But it does either feel like we must recover the binding key, or this really is part of the last things.
ReplyDeleteThe one, probably only, thing I have to admire in Drehr is that he seems to understand that the same tactics currently used to suppress the free speech of odious far-right boogeymen can easily be applied to center-right social conservative churchgoers. The far-right cannot exists as a normal political movement because anyone publicly identified with it will lose whatever source of income they have. Its main figures are either independently wealthy, live off donations from fans, or are informants paid by the taxpayer or anti-racist NGOs. I can't say alot of them don't deserve it, but once you accept the princple that a wage-slave can be fired for opinions contrary to the boss, this can be applied to a slightly conservative Baptist or Catholic who voted for Jeb Bush, because of the (false) analogy between racial minorities and LGBTs.
ReplyDeleteThis problem is exacerbated by the increasing number of white-collar liberals who didn't grow up around religion, have no Christian or even socially conservative friends/relatives, don't read books or watch movies from prior to the 60s, and have no understanding of the rationale for social conservative positions beyond animus. Christians (sans mainline protestants and the liberal faction of Catholics) are as mysterious and strange to bourgeois liberals as they were to 2nd century Romans.
So is the problem that Christians haven't done enough soul-searching or internal reform, or the problem that we simply live in under a increasingly repressive political order?
Drehr seeks to avoid repression by turning mainstream Christianity into a quaint minority religion based around insular intentional communities that the eye of Sauron would choose to ignore, as is the case with the Amish and Hasidic Jews, who are given a free pass to be not just social conservatives, but extremists. I can't see this working, but this has been discussed elsewhere.
Part of the soy Cucktianity is not just suppression of fighting spirit, but also the suppression of healthy sexuality in Christian males. While clergy and monastics always had a slight tendency to to fall into one kind of gnostic heresy, or another, in this day and age of promiscuity and degeneracy honest Christian men tend to overcompensate by becoming completely emasculated cucks. Without healthy masculinity, there will be no Christian families. And who is guilty for emasculation of Christian men? The clergy! Does anyone here know any priest (or preacher for you Protestants out there) that will openly and seriously preach that wife ought to obey her husband? Or that there is no such thing as marital rape? Or that women, instead of chasing careers should stay home and bear children? No, no priest or preacher will dare preach that. Oh, they will rail on and on against promiscuity and degeneracy (which on its own is fine) BUT, and a big one and that, they will never give any positive message. Go forth, marry young, have lots of children! That is a no no. And so how is a Christian man to form, if only examples of sexuality he knows is the blackest black? By being suppressed sexually frustrated cuck, and a borderline gnostic who considers flesh something filthy and evil.
ReplyDeleteIndeed my good doctor, I fully buy into your theory that it was the trads that killed the faith. Theological liberals do not take the faith seriously, and trads make sure that no one does. Nice little complementary push-pull swirl into atheism.
To the Anon poster who said there’s no such thing as marital rape. This answer may be rough for sensitive readers.
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly believe it’s God’s will for you to hold down a squirming, crying woman and force yourself into her, but it’s ok because she’s your wife? If you’re able to maintain an erection under these circumstances what kind of man does that make you?
Both men and women owe the marital debt, but is the proper recourse seizing it by force, or viewing it as a practical abandonment if it persists over time? If you’re supposed to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, how about your wife starts physically violating and humiliating you when you don’t do your duty?
Love this blog because it reminds me of blogs I would write and read back in the early 2000s that were dealing with interesting subjects in a personal way. Also gives me something intelligent to disagree with. As an Eastern Orthodox Christian I have to object to your desire to care at all about politics and about the West. Who cares if the West declines? Jesus doesn't need good societies to save souls and he certainly doesn't need Catholic civilization to save souls. In fact I don't remember Jesus being much worried about civilizational advancement or preservation.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever been to India? My wife's family is from Goa on the coast. The Portuguese took over the place and Catholicised it for centuries. When you talk to the Catholic Indians in Goa, do you think they talk about the West and the church and this and that? No, they say "The fast is coming up". This is a luxurious preoccupation my brother. Give it up and take a vacay in Goa.
@Killyekfael
ReplyDeleteFirstly, thanks for commenting! Your thoughts are welcome here.
I agree with you that there exists a "noble" version of nationalism and that political independence is required to achieve it. The modern EU is a different from what was envisaged by its founders, and is destroying the identity of its member states.
As for religion being a private matter, it is. But what makes us a community, is a shared religous experience. i.e. it unites us by placing in all of us "something in common". Religious peoples are by nature individuals which share a common faith. Therefore the foundation of community religion is a priori faith.
You are right, also, that conversions are first needed, but an integralist state that arises from a community of faith is different from integralist state that imposes its faith upon its subjects. I think that the problem with 20th Century integralism is that sees the faith as a sociological project, with religion being "engineered" by appropriate social policy.
There is a world of difference between a society of peaceful people and a society of violent criminals kept peaceful by a strong police state. In the first society, peace is integral to that society, while in the second, peace is extrinsic to it.
I think that problem with much 20'th Century Catholic Integralism is that it was more like the second type of state rather than the first. That's why when the 60's happened and the "policemen" left, religion collapsed quickly. Men like Henri Godin saw this in the 1940's but I don't think many others did.
@Hoyos
ReplyDeleteI think that why we learn so much about Pharisees and Sadducees...... both are disconnected from God although ironically Pharisees come off better than you think in total
Agree. I think they're the classic example of the conservative/liberal: right/left axis that we see in human nature.
The images of people kneeling everywhere has a religious and political significance as submission to an ideology that has almost nothing to do with the actions of some idiot cop in Minneapolis
I think that the issue here is that people want to be good toward minorities--I don't think that there is some deeper spiritual thing going here-- but the only way they know/understand being good is by being submissive. I think that many whites think that they have to "take on the burden of Christ" (a least in habit) and suffer on behalf of blacks in order to repay some cosmic debt owed by whites to blacks. They're quite happy to degrade and submit themselves to looting and violence because.......well isn't that what Christians have been taught for years.
I know that many of them are not Christian, but we're still living on the fumes of a Christian culture, and hold habits die hard even though the reason for them have long since gone.
BTW, I think Bill Barr has acquitted himself admirably during this whole circus.
@Mark
The effect of religionless Christianity is the elimination of the church as a real institution.
I see the Church as a "mystical body" not because my Church has taught me this but experience has shown me that there seem to be a body of Christians who would live this stuff even without the teachings of a bishop. Almost like a secret society or "resistance". Members are all on the same page even though they may never had met. Rousseau talked of a "general will" but I think that the mystical Church operates as a "general spirit " i.e. Caritas and acts in accord with it.
"religionless Christianity" is less of a consequence I think of the lack of "physical church" as much as it is "intuitive religious belief" shorn of Grace. Nice feels without the demands of Grace.
@Anon 1
ReplyDeleteDrehr seeks to avoid repression by turning mainstream Christianity into a quaint minority religion based around insular intentional communities that the eye of Sauron would choose to ignore, as is the case with the Amish and Hasidic Jews,
I've always thought that the glaring oversight in his Benedict option is the notion that there will be a place of refuge. Eastern Europe may not be persecuting Christians yet, but in many ways it resembles the U.S. in the Early 80's. A lot of religious belief is due to habit rather than faith and things could go like they have in the U.S.
@Anon 2
in this day and age of promiscuity and degeneracy honest Christian men tend to overcompensate by becoming completely emasculated cucks
Or hypermasculine savages. (And I'm being restrained here given some of your comments)
Or that there is no such thing as marital rape? Or that women, instead of chasing careers should stay home and bear children?
See, you criticise the trads but then repeat some of the thinking of their more neanderthal elements.
Rape.
In marriage.
A Christian virtue?
WTF?
Much of the motive force of Feminism was powered by a (just)reaction to this type of rubbish. Now I know, that some very traditional societies sailed very close to the ideas you espouse but it just goes to show you that every liberal idiocy is balanced by a traditionalist one.
BTW, see Hoyos's reply.
@ The Wrangler.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it's appreciated.
"Who cares if the West declines? Jesus doesn't need good societies to save souls and he certainly doesn't need Catholic civilization to save souls."
I think that the Christian religions all have some element of Truth in the them but the most true is the Catholic one. Christian civilisation was the product of Caritas and no other civilisation comes even close in its accomplishments. Western civilisation is the product of Cartias working on a segment of humanity. Now it may be true that God may decided to move to a different area and Western Civ is dead, but it is my hope that this is not the case. Furthermore, the torch has now been passed to my generation, and when I stand before the seat of judgement and have to make an accounting, I want to be able to say I did all I could to keep the temple from falling down.
I haven't been to Goa though I've met a few (Good) people from there. It looks like a great place to take a holiday.
Also I just want to say that I don't write much about Eastern Orthodoxy because I've only been peripherally involved with it. And I don't really want to put out opinions I can't defend.
At least to a small degree.
I agree that Christianity always was a VERY feminist religion when compared to Judaism, Islam, and especially Asian Religions. So, marital obligations do go both ways. You do not have the right to deny your wife, nor she you. If one is not up for it, and another has understanding and OKs it, then it is fine. But obligations are called obligations for a reason. Pure and simple, if one spouse denies another too much, (s)he is inviting adultery.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteChristianity isn't an "ist" in any way its the ultimate good. Judaism and Islam and Asian religions are deviations from the perfection of God himself.
Patriarchy as God ordained it is the Golden Mean. Both ists and isms are deviations from that.
@The Social Pathologist
ReplyDeleteIn the light of (1 Corinthians 7). Marital Rape is a category error. Sure hurting one's spouse is Assault and that should be dealt with but it cannot be Rape.
Otherwise it is a denial of that commandment. Since Marriage is lifelong consent.
@Anon
ReplyDeleteI agree that Christianity always was a VERY feminist religion when compared to Judaism, Islam, and especially Asian Religions.
I wouldn't say that it was very feminist. I'd say it recognised the dignity of a women in a way that other religions didn't. I think the issue of Christian "femininity" is too big for a combox comment, so I'll leave it at that.
Pure and simple, if one spouse denies another too much, (s)he is inviting adultery.
I think that the deliberate witholding of sex is a serious sin against the marriage. But it's incumbent for a partner not to be offputting....in all the various manifestations that it can be expressed in. Arousal isn't a simple matter of choice.
@ John
Marital Rape is a category error.
Rape is sex without consent, and it can definitely occur in marriage. Rape being understood as sex without consent. What's too lightly interpreted in Corinthians is the idea that
" The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife."
Goes both ways. A wife also has control of her husband and if she says that he should not have sex with her, her command is his to obey.
Christianity, at least in this passage, recognises that sex is part of the deal in marriage, and that deliberately withholding it is wrong but it doesn't mean that sex "on demand" at any time or place, without consideration of the wishes of the other partner is a moral right.
@The Social Pathologist
ReplyDeleteIf you read the Church Canons from the era of Classical Antiquity some of it may seem weird to a modern reader. E.g. if a non-married woman was promiscuous and gets forcibly raped it counts as a sin of fornication on her part, and she has to give the same penance as if she voluntarily committed the sin of fornication (if on the other hand, she was known to be a virgin, then she is considered to have done no wrong). But I think this was written for women because men rarely got raped. Otherwise, it was egalitarian e.g. if a couple, well, you know, couples without the consent of their legal guardians, it is considered a sin on fornication on their part for marriage could not be entered into without the consent of legal guardians. Like that the Canon Law held sexes to be equal in most regards (which was extremely weird for the era, before the advent of Christianity women were not ever considered to be full humans). Church Fathers of Classical Antiquity also complained how secular law of the era was unjust e.g. had punishments for adulteresses, but no punishments for adulterers (which is reasonable, if either side breaks a contract it should suffer the consequences), how positive law is biased against women etc. etc. Reading that did not sit well with my reactionary impulses to say the least (it sounded very feminist to me). I had always thought that deterring women and female sexuality was according to right reason. After all, eggs are highly in demand and scarce in supply, while reverse is true for spermatozoids. But, I guess the problem is that today secular laws are biased against men.
@ Anon
ReplyDeleteif a non-married woman was promiscuous and gets forcibly raped it counts as a sin of fornication on her part, and she has to give the same penance as if she voluntarily committed the sin of fornication
I think Italy had a similar law until recently with the women being made to suffer if they were raped. Clearly, this offends our sense of justice. Something which we seem to be more aware of as history has passed.
This points out to a bigger issue at play here, namely the notion that the early Church was a "purer" church than the what followed. It's a more sublte variation of the idea of a "historical Christ". There's a lot to this, but the principle at play here is that Christianity cannot develop into any new forms with the passage of time.
An oak develops from a sapling. But this"historical" idea is akin to the notion that the proper form of the oak IS the sapling and that the developed oak is a deviation from the ideal. It's quite clear from the early Church fathers that a sense of justice was owed to both men and women but I do think that there was some historical conditioning which modified this ideas expression. Hence the Church's early attitude to rape.
Compared to antiquity, and many modern non-Christian cultures, the Church was "liberal" when it came to female issues but it was not feminist.
"Rape is sex without consent, and it can definitely occur in marriage. Rape being understood as sex without consent. What's too lightly interpreted in Corinthians is the idea that"
ReplyDeleteMarriage is lifelong consent isn't it? Just like becoming a soldier obligates one to obey lawful orders.
I think voxday made that argument:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2009/08/there-is-no-marital-rape.html
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/heat-street-debate-marital-rape.html
If it is hurtful or humilating or is bad in other ways sure then that should be dealt with. But I don't think the definition works in a marital context. Non-consent in marital context is divorce.
This also creates the additional problem of regret sex. Of which the Wife can accuse her husband of rape because of that. With no recourse hence the Marriage is effectively null. Even as it is Consent for Life.
Violent coercion on the other hand can be dealt with on its own. As assault.
Sorry, SP, I admire you and I have learnt a lot from you, but you mix Christianity with feminist categories.
ReplyDelete"Rape is sex without consent, and it can definitely occur in marriage."
Yes, a definition that is not found in the Bible or the tradition of the Church but it is the standard feminist definition.
The Bible never talks about consent. And even less about consent being the basis of the morality of sexual intercourse. The basis is marriage.
Of course, this does not mean "sex on demand" at any time or place". Nobody said that. But constant denial of sex is a serious sin and a break of marital vows. "You must not deprive each other, except by mutual consent for a limited time, to leave yourselves free for prayer, and to come together again afterwards; otherwise Satan may take advantage of any lack of self-control to put you to the test." (1 Corinthians 7,5)
Don't get me wrong. Of course, I am against a husband forcing himself on his wife. Not because it is rape (it is not, according to the Bible), but because it is aggression. Because an evil is not an excuse to commit another evil.
And I don't think that a wife constantly denying sex to her husband is excuse for this husband to commit adultery. Because an evil is not an excuse to commit another evil.
"Feminism was powered by a (just)reaction to this type of rubbish"
Yes, this is the standard feminist excuse. Feminism was a reaction against the excesses of men abusing wives, abusing his power. In other words, "you made me do it". The standard excuse of people doing wrong.
BS. Women have always been, are and will always be a privileged group of people. Because they are the scarce resource in sex and reproduction. This is biology and you can't escape that. I am not bitter about that: it is the way things are, but let's not fool ourselves with standard feminist rubbish, which is contrary to the faith.
Traditional societies were not different. Men went to war while women stayed at home. Men went to work under the sun, while women stayed at home (working but in a more pleasant way). Women and children were first. A poor woman on the Titanic had a survival rate higher than a rich man on the Titanic.
There were cases of women being abused? Of course. And even more cases of men being abused. More men died in violent deaths than women (like now, like always). But thinking that feminism was a reaction to these things is simply not true. (Life has been hard for men and women for millennia but feminism was a specific movement in the last 100 years).
A combox is not a place to explain the birth and reasons of feminism, but, please, let's don't mix Christianity with feminism.
"This also creates the additional problem of regret sex. Of which the Wife can accuse her husband of rape because of that. With no recourse hence the Marriage is effectively null. Even as it is Consent for Life."
ReplyDeleteWhen you make consent the basis of sexual morality instead of marriage, you are nullifying marriage, even without regret sex. Because a spouse can unilaterally withdraw consent forever so the other has no sexual rights in marriage (and not sexual rights outside marriage, because this is sin).
Since sex is an important part of marriage, you have nullified marriage in favor of a new concept called "consent", which is not Christian.
It is like saying that I sign a contract to rent a room and, after paying, the owner tells me I can only live in that room when the owner feels like it. Of course, in this case, the contract is null and void, because the only thing that counts is the feelings of the owner at any given time. This is not a reason to force my way into the room or assaulting the owner. But it is a serious breach of contract. In fact, a nullification of contract.
Hello Chent,
ReplyDeleteSorry, it's been a very busy week. Will get back to you in the next few days.
The Dissident Right needs leaders who aren't compromised:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.renegadetribune.com/tucker-carlson-advocates-child-rape-thats-why-andrew-anglin-promotes-him/
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete