Hey Daniel, as usual, very nice well-written article, very well argued and stated. I agree with many of these ideas. Definitely, the classical rhetoric need to be re-discovered, and especially the poetic understanding. In particular, what sticks out to me in this essay is the association of the Word with God. I think this is profoundly true. I think modern life cuts us off from common sense, from the common experience of the world, the most obvious things about life. You have such a better understanding of these things through living on a rural farm! Envious! My question is, why not just abandon modern thought altogether? Isn't the evidence of the last 500 years conclusive? The goal of modernism was to enlighten people. Modern thought simply does not get us from here to there. It seems to me that the only antidote to modernism is to openly affirm the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of God, and reject the foundations of modernist agnosticism. This is easier said than done of course... Why do we take it for granted that God is dead? Just because Nietzsche said so? But the experience of billions of other people, including very reputable & meritorious intellectuals, says otherwise. I am genuinely interested in the question of why is it so hard to simply openly affirm God's existence in this culture. I find myself struggling to say God Bless to the store clerk. When I do I always feel better about things. Is it because God is counter-cultural? Is it because it's not an acceptable social norm? Is it because God implies some exclusion of people's beliefs? Well what if they have wrong or untrue beliefs that hurt them and those around them? Isn't it charitable to tell them? Is it because Thomas Jefferson enshrined the idea that religion is a private matter? Is it because of the freemasonry ideas in the founders of the US? My view is that Christ always has been and always will be the counter-culture, because He is the Way to Eternal Life; most people only want temporary pleasures, not lasting Goodness in the world. It simply never was true that God is dead, the Eternal does not die. You begin to see the glimpses of more theological influence in the culture in people like Jordan Peterson. To me, that is the first of many steps towards recovery of the true perennial philosophy or *sacra scientia*. St. Thomas Aquinas offers a complete & holistic foundations of science, mathematics, moreso than any "complexity theory" or robot theory stuff. In any case, I really appreciate how you reason through these modern dilemmas, you have a very unique perspective on them.
It’s always a delight to hear from you, my friend, and I hope you and yours are thriving in all that you do. Indeed, Classic Rhetoric is desperately needed today, and a return to a cherishing of “Practical Knowledge” and even the “Personal Knowledge” that Polanyi discusses (we are indeed blessed by the farm). And on the topic of Polanyi, I agree that Modern Logic is devouring itself, which I sum up by claiming that “the true” and “the rational” have been conflated, which leads to all types of pathologies, neurosis, and effacements. I think a return to Classic Logic to some degree is a very fair route, and indeed “Belonging Again” will discuss numerous possibilities that arise in light of our modern Sociological Dilemma.
You’re right to connect “Word” with “God,” and on the question of the difficulty of “affirming God,” I think the difficulty of determining a “justified affirmation” or an “affirmation that could feel like selling a product.” Fear is not a good justification for avoiding such an affirmation (“the one who fears is not made perfect in love,” 1 John 4:18), but Jesus certainly wasn’t afraid when he refused to speak to Pilate. In Luke 22:70-71, there’s a way in which Jesus seems to be avoiding the question of affirming His Divinity, but in another way he is not offering the affirmation to people who aren’t seriously asking Him. Had Jesus said, “Yes,” would the crowd really have fallen to their knees and worshiped Him? Absolutely not: they were asking insincerely in hopes of justifying an execution, as evident by their reply to Jesus’s reply (“Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips.”). Jesus actually didn’t affirm them, and yet they heard an affirmation anyway. Hence, they had an agenda: they were not serious listeners.
Similarly, it is interesting to note how there is a stress in the Second Testament on evangelism and spreading the word, while the First Testament stresses God “making a people.” God does not command the Jewish people to spread the message of Judaism so much, but to instead focus on “being a people” who attracted in and changed the surrounding nations through example. There seems to be “affirmation by example” and “affirmation by word,” and though there is obvious overlap, it’s interesting that which is emphasized seems to be relative to the age and nation. Jesus also gives us an example of how His affirmation changes relative to whom He is speaking.
Considering this, I think there is a sense today that “how” we affirm Jesus is relative to the context and audience. There is both the possibility of a fear to affirm Christ that is problematic and a fear 'not' to affirm Christ that disregards the audience, and it’s not always easy to tell which is appropriate and where. A whole conversation could orbit just this dilemma. Also, I think it can be hard to affirm God in the same way that it can be very difficult to openly discuss very private and personal experiences that are hard to understand if a person wasn’t “there” and “part of it.” I can for example tell you that I was there for the birth of all my children, but this affirmation is hardly a description of the experience at all. I don’t know if I can put it into words, and even trying can feel off and inappropriate, like I might dishonor it. It’s a strange tension.
Generally, it is not so hard to discuss God with other people who believe in God, because they can at least “relate” to what you’re getting at, but other people can scoff. This can feel like “throwing pearls before swine,” and Bonhoeffer interestingly enough makes the point in “The Cost of Discipleship” that pearls will kill pigs, suggesting that we cannot throw “peals before swine” for the sake of the pigs. Similarly, if we affirm God to people who we cannot also justify that affirmation too, we might actually hurt their capacity to relate to God. This might be what is going on when Jesus keeps His Divinity secret: since God is Love, there is reason to think that this concealment is somehow for the sake of Jesus’s audience. This also hints at God’s Hiddenness, as described in Dante as being an expression of God’s Grace and Love. If God is not Hidden to those who are not ready for Him, they will be effaced. It should be noted also that Bonhoeffer warned against an evangelism that made people view themselves as saviors and “needing” to tell people about God from a place of insecurity, for this risked suggesting that the Holy Spirit didn’t ultimately play the key role.
There is also a very interesting book I read called “Secret Faith in the Public Square” by Jonathan Malesic which I suggest, though I cannot say I follow Mr. Malesic in all his thinking. There, he discusses Kierkegaard and Gregory of Nyssa (to name two), and how religion is always at risk of being turned into a “currency” that people use for social status and to determine “who’s in” and “who’s out.” There is also the risk of Christianity being affirmed in a manner that then makes it “capturable” (Deleuze) by politics, which can lead to Christendom versus Christianity (Kierkegaard). I have a paper on that topic called “Currenization” that I wrote back in 2015—I should edit and publish it. It’s an interesting and difficult dilemma.
What you bring up is very important, and I have a lot of papers on evangelism that I need to get together in a theology collection. Nietzsche was right on “God being dead” insomuch as that means “Christianity is generally just Christendom,” which is a sentiment shared by Kierkegaard. It is a sociological reality we now have to deal with (the loss of “givens,” as discussed in “Belonging Again”), and the question now is simply what is the best way to go apart being a Believer in the world today. Should we use a strategy of Kierkegaard or something more direct? It depends on the context, society, and particular circumstances of the situation, I think but for me, I generally like the ideas of Hans Balthasar on beauty, for beauty attracts and changes in the attraction.
Anyway my friend, I also appreciate hearing from you and wish you the best in all that you do. Please know that I bring up your work at “Intrinsic Research Co” all the time and that I appreciate your kind words.
Thank you so much Daniel, for your thoughtful & detailed reply, ever insightful, and as always, speaking the heart of the issue. I came across this wonderful lecture from Dr. Jared Staudt on this topic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBM5IgNO0U ... The lecture is just incredible, given just two days after Easter in 2020, about a month after a pandemic had hit. And so here Dr. Staudt speaks to a twofold crisis occurring- death of God and the crisis of health... And basically, what he says is that Nietzsche is in a way right that God is dead.. but the significance of the teaching is that is that we have killed him, with our own sins, that was what Nietzsche was really saying. If we look at the parable of the madman from the Gay Science http://historyguide.org/europe/madman.html, the message of the death of God was a deeply Christian (albeit Lutheran, fatalistic) sentiment. It was that, like the crowd shouting "crucify him," we are responsible for the death of God. That was what Nietzsche had meant by this, and he was right! But what Nietzsche had gotten wrong is that the death of God is not the end of the story. God has come back to life. Christ has overcome death. And the secular culture deeply influenced by Nietzsche still goes about as if the death of God is somehow the end of the story. That somehow, we can still go about our lives as if God has died, and somehow that will turn out ok. We know from experience that it doesn't turn out ok. And so I think that under the surface many many people do realize that God has come back to life, that he has overcome death. But still somehow, in the culture where religion is a private matter, it does not facilitate our saying so, is not conducive to sharing that reality, especially given religious wars, persecution, ignorance. It's easy to read the last 600 years as a time of entrenched religious barbarism & bigotry that we are gradually being freed from by reason & science, but its also just as easy to read the last 600 years as a time of decline & decadence as civilization strays from the truth of tradition. I don't think it's that both interpretations are equally valid, I think it's almost that they are one and the same interpretation. Religious ignorance is almost one and the same with scientific ignorance, as science itself has become a heretical transhumanist faith. The Eternal Tradition is itself Truth, Goodness, & Beauty. And it's almost entirely forgotten, it's almost unknown. And as you have gotten to the heart of the issue- why does Christ seem to conceal Himself after He is Resurrected? On the road to Emmaus, Christ speaks with the two disciples at length, revealing to them to whole meaning of the Scriptures, and they don't even recognize Him, until the supper. Mary Magdalene thought He was the gardener before she recognized Him! So there is a very interesting dimension of the hiddenness of God, the concealment. One interesting part of this is that in the Church, there is not separation of the mystical and the canonical (or what we might call the esoteric & the exoteric meaning). In Judaism & Islam for example, there is a mystical teaching on the one hand, and a exoteric / dogmatic, rule-based teaching on the other hand. (Kabbalah and Hallakah/mitzvot in judaism, Sufi and wahabi (?) in islam), but in Catholicism the mystical & the dogmatic are interwoven. And this speaks to the idea of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law- that faith & works are interwoven, and also faith & reason are interwoven- we mustn't take it too far, as our society has, and throw out the letter of the law, throw out works, throw out reason (or in the opposite case, deify reason). And of course, your work on the The True Isn't the Rational speaks to exactly this French Revolutionary problem of holding up reason as the answer. And I still think that you are right that there is this deep teaching in the Gospel on the nature of the particular, the situation, what is called prudence- the ability to know what is appropriate in each unique situation without any kind of prior template. It is an intuitive foreknowledge. And also speaking the fullness of Truth in the Gospel, without ever deliberately concealing or hiding or distorting the Truth, yet still not being able to "say it all at once." We have to re-build Christian Civilization in a post-Christian era, that means we must be bold and at the same time prudent & tactical in our Apostolate, as to not put people off or offend them, and at the same time have courage in lifting them up closer to the Truth. Cheers my friend! May you & your family always be rewarded with the best!
Hey Daniel, as usual, very nice well-written article, very well argued and stated. I agree with many of these ideas. Definitely, the classical rhetoric need to be re-discovered, and especially the poetic understanding. In particular, what sticks out to me in this essay is the association of the Word with God. I think this is profoundly true. I think modern life cuts us off from common sense, from the common experience of the world, the most obvious things about life. You have such a better understanding of these things through living on a rural farm! Envious! My question is, why not just abandon modern thought altogether? Isn't the evidence of the last 500 years conclusive? The goal of modernism was to enlighten people. Modern thought simply does not get us from here to there. It seems to me that the only antidote to modernism is to openly affirm the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of God, and reject the foundations of modernist agnosticism. This is easier said than done of course... Why do we take it for granted that God is dead? Just because Nietzsche said so? But the experience of billions of other people, including very reputable & meritorious intellectuals, says otherwise. I am genuinely interested in the question of why is it so hard to simply openly affirm God's existence in this culture. I find myself struggling to say God Bless to the store clerk. When I do I always feel better about things. Is it because God is counter-cultural? Is it because it's not an acceptable social norm? Is it because God implies some exclusion of people's beliefs? Well what if they have wrong or untrue beliefs that hurt them and those around them? Isn't it charitable to tell them? Is it because Thomas Jefferson enshrined the idea that religion is a private matter? Is it because of the freemasonry ideas in the founders of the US? My view is that Christ always has been and always will be the counter-culture, because He is the Way to Eternal Life; most people only want temporary pleasures, not lasting Goodness in the world. It simply never was true that God is dead, the Eternal does not die. You begin to see the glimpses of more theological influence in the culture in people like Jordan Peterson. To me, that is the first of many steps towards recovery of the true perennial philosophy or *sacra scientia*. St. Thomas Aquinas offers a complete & holistic foundations of science, mathematics, moreso than any "complexity theory" or robot theory stuff. In any case, I really appreciate how you reason through these modern dilemmas, you have a very unique perspective on them.
It’s always a delight to hear from you, my friend, and I hope you and yours are thriving in all that you do. Indeed, Classic Rhetoric is desperately needed today, and a return to a cherishing of “Practical Knowledge” and even the “Personal Knowledge” that Polanyi discusses (we are indeed blessed by the farm). And on the topic of Polanyi, I agree that Modern Logic is devouring itself, which I sum up by claiming that “the true” and “the rational” have been conflated, which leads to all types of pathologies, neurosis, and effacements. I think a return to Classic Logic to some degree is a very fair route, and indeed “Belonging Again” will discuss numerous possibilities that arise in light of our modern Sociological Dilemma.
You’re right to connect “Word” with “God,” and on the question of the difficulty of “affirming God,” I think the difficulty of determining a “justified affirmation” or an “affirmation that could feel like selling a product.” Fear is not a good justification for avoiding such an affirmation (“the one who fears is not made perfect in love,” 1 John 4:18), but Jesus certainly wasn’t afraid when he refused to speak to Pilate. In Luke 22:70-71, there’s a way in which Jesus seems to be avoiding the question of affirming His Divinity, but in another way he is not offering the affirmation to people who aren’t seriously asking Him. Had Jesus said, “Yes,” would the crowd really have fallen to their knees and worshiped Him? Absolutely not: they were asking insincerely in hopes of justifying an execution, as evident by their reply to Jesus’s reply (“Why do we need any more testimony? We have heard it from his own lips.”). Jesus actually didn’t affirm them, and yet they heard an affirmation anyway. Hence, they had an agenda: they were not serious listeners.
Similarly, it is interesting to note how there is a stress in the Second Testament on evangelism and spreading the word, while the First Testament stresses God “making a people.” God does not command the Jewish people to spread the message of Judaism so much, but to instead focus on “being a people” who attracted in and changed the surrounding nations through example. There seems to be “affirmation by example” and “affirmation by word,” and though there is obvious overlap, it’s interesting that which is emphasized seems to be relative to the age and nation. Jesus also gives us an example of how His affirmation changes relative to whom He is speaking.
Considering this, I think there is a sense today that “how” we affirm Jesus is relative to the context and audience. There is both the possibility of a fear to affirm Christ that is problematic and a fear 'not' to affirm Christ that disregards the audience, and it’s not always easy to tell which is appropriate and where. A whole conversation could orbit just this dilemma. Also, I think it can be hard to affirm God in the same way that it can be very difficult to openly discuss very private and personal experiences that are hard to understand if a person wasn’t “there” and “part of it.” I can for example tell you that I was there for the birth of all my children, but this affirmation is hardly a description of the experience at all. I don’t know if I can put it into words, and even trying can feel off and inappropriate, like I might dishonor it. It’s a strange tension.
Generally, it is not so hard to discuss God with other people who believe in God, because they can at least “relate” to what you’re getting at, but other people can scoff. This can feel like “throwing pearls before swine,” and Bonhoeffer interestingly enough makes the point in “The Cost of Discipleship” that pearls will kill pigs, suggesting that we cannot throw “peals before swine” for the sake of the pigs. Similarly, if we affirm God to people who we cannot also justify that affirmation too, we might actually hurt their capacity to relate to God. This might be what is going on when Jesus keeps His Divinity secret: since God is Love, there is reason to think that this concealment is somehow for the sake of Jesus’s audience. This also hints at God’s Hiddenness, as described in Dante as being an expression of God’s Grace and Love. If God is not Hidden to those who are not ready for Him, they will be effaced. It should be noted also that Bonhoeffer warned against an evangelism that made people view themselves as saviors and “needing” to tell people about God from a place of insecurity, for this risked suggesting that the Holy Spirit didn’t ultimately play the key role.
There is also a very interesting book I read called “Secret Faith in the Public Square” by Jonathan Malesic which I suggest, though I cannot say I follow Mr. Malesic in all his thinking. There, he discusses Kierkegaard and Gregory of Nyssa (to name two), and how religion is always at risk of being turned into a “currency” that people use for social status and to determine “who’s in” and “who’s out.” There is also the risk of Christianity being affirmed in a manner that then makes it “capturable” (Deleuze) by politics, which can lead to Christendom versus Christianity (Kierkegaard). I have a paper on that topic called “Currenization” that I wrote back in 2015—I should edit and publish it. It’s an interesting and difficult dilemma.
What you bring up is very important, and I have a lot of papers on evangelism that I need to get together in a theology collection. Nietzsche was right on “God being dead” insomuch as that means “Christianity is generally just Christendom,” which is a sentiment shared by Kierkegaard. It is a sociological reality we now have to deal with (the loss of “givens,” as discussed in “Belonging Again”), and the question now is simply what is the best way to go apart being a Believer in the world today. Should we use a strategy of Kierkegaard or something more direct? It depends on the context, society, and particular circumstances of the situation, I think but for me, I generally like the ideas of Hans Balthasar on beauty, for beauty attracts and changes in the attraction.
Anyway my friend, I also appreciate hearing from you and wish you the best in all that you do. Please know that I bring up your work at “Intrinsic Research Co” all the time and that I appreciate your kind words.
Thank you so much Daniel, for your thoughtful & detailed reply, ever insightful, and as always, speaking the heart of the issue. I came across this wonderful lecture from Dr. Jared Staudt on this topic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBM5IgNO0U ... The lecture is just incredible, given just two days after Easter in 2020, about a month after a pandemic had hit. And so here Dr. Staudt speaks to a twofold crisis occurring- death of God and the crisis of health... And basically, what he says is that Nietzsche is in a way right that God is dead.. but the significance of the teaching is that is that we have killed him, with our own sins, that was what Nietzsche was really saying. If we look at the parable of the madman from the Gay Science http://historyguide.org/europe/madman.html, the message of the death of God was a deeply Christian (albeit Lutheran, fatalistic) sentiment. It was that, like the crowd shouting "crucify him," we are responsible for the death of God. That was what Nietzsche had meant by this, and he was right! But what Nietzsche had gotten wrong is that the death of God is not the end of the story. God has come back to life. Christ has overcome death. And the secular culture deeply influenced by Nietzsche still goes about as if the death of God is somehow the end of the story. That somehow, we can still go about our lives as if God has died, and somehow that will turn out ok. We know from experience that it doesn't turn out ok. And so I think that under the surface many many people do realize that God has come back to life, that he has overcome death. But still somehow, in the culture where religion is a private matter, it does not facilitate our saying so, is not conducive to sharing that reality, especially given religious wars, persecution, ignorance. It's easy to read the last 600 years as a time of entrenched religious barbarism & bigotry that we are gradually being freed from by reason & science, but its also just as easy to read the last 600 years as a time of decline & decadence as civilization strays from the truth of tradition. I don't think it's that both interpretations are equally valid, I think it's almost that they are one and the same interpretation. Religious ignorance is almost one and the same with scientific ignorance, as science itself has become a heretical transhumanist faith. The Eternal Tradition is itself Truth, Goodness, & Beauty. And it's almost entirely forgotten, it's almost unknown. And as you have gotten to the heart of the issue- why does Christ seem to conceal Himself after He is Resurrected? On the road to Emmaus, Christ speaks with the two disciples at length, revealing to them to whole meaning of the Scriptures, and they don't even recognize Him, until the supper. Mary Magdalene thought He was the gardener before she recognized Him! So there is a very interesting dimension of the hiddenness of God, the concealment. One interesting part of this is that in the Church, there is not separation of the mystical and the canonical (or what we might call the esoteric & the exoteric meaning). In Judaism & Islam for example, there is a mystical teaching on the one hand, and a exoteric / dogmatic, rule-based teaching on the other hand. (Kabbalah and Hallakah/mitzvot in judaism, Sufi and wahabi (?) in islam), but in Catholicism the mystical & the dogmatic are interwoven. And this speaks to the idea of the letter of the law and the spirit of the law- that faith & works are interwoven, and also faith & reason are interwoven- we mustn't take it too far, as our society has, and throw out the letter of the law, throw out works, throw out reason (or in the opposite case, deify reason). And of course, your work on the The True Isn't the Rational speaks to exactly this French Revolutionary problem of holding up reason as the answer. And I still think that you are right that there is this deep teaching in the Gospel on the nature of the particular, the situation, what is called prudence- the ability to know what is appropriate in each unique situation without any kind of prior template. It is an intuitive foreknowledge. And also speaking the fullness of Truth in the Gospel, without ever deliberately concealing or hiding or distorting the Truth, yet still not being able to "say it all at once." We have to re-build Christian Civilization in a post-Christian era, that means we must be bold and at the same time prudent & tactical in our Apostolate, as to not put people off or offend them, and at the same time have courage in lifting them up closer to the Truth. Cheers my friend! May you & your family always be rewarded with the best!