IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
to construct a dynamic religion on metaphysical principles alone, since pure intuition affords no real basis for social action. On the other hand, if we abandon the metaphysical element and content ourselves with purely ethical and social ideals, we are still further from a solution, since there is no longer any basis for a spiritual order. The unity of the inner world dissolves in subjectivism and skepticism, and society is threatened with anarchy and dissolution. And since social life is impossible without order, it is necessary to resort to some external principle of compulsion, whether political or economic. In the ancient world this principle was found in the military despotism of the Roman Empire, and in the modern world we have the even more complete and far-reaching organization of the economic machine. Here indeed we have an order, but it is an order that is far more inhuman and indifferent to moral values than the static theocratic order of the Oriental religion-cultures.
But is there no alternative between Americanism and Orientalism, between a spiritual order that takes no account of human needs and a material order that has no regard for spiritual values? There still remains the traditional religion of our own civilization: Christianity, a religion that is neither wholly metaphysical nor merely ethical, but one that brings the spiritual world into vital and fruitful communion with the life of man.
The whole spiritual inheritance of European civilization is based upon Christianity, and even today whatever there is of religious life and spiritual aspiration in the West still draws its vitality from Christian sources.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that for centuries Christianity has been progressively losing its hold on Western culture, and both its doctrines and its moral ideals have fallen into discredit. The causes of this state of things lie deep in that process of humanization and rationalizing of Western culture which I described in the earlier part of this essay. Ever since the Renaissance the centrifugal tendencies in our civilization have destroyed its spiritual unity and divided its spiritual forces. The Western mind has turned away from the contemplation of the absolute and the eternal to the knowledge of the particular and the contingent. It has made man the measure of all things and has sought to emancipate human life from its dependence on the supernatural. Instead of the whole intellectual and social order being subordinated to spiritual principles, every activity has declared its independence, and we see politics, economics, science, and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power.
And these tendencies were not confined to the secular side of life; they made themselves felt in religion also. Religion came to be regarded as one among a number of competing interests – a limited department of life, which had no jurisdiction over the rest. And as it lost its universal authority, it lost its universal vision; it became sectionalized and rationalized with the rest of European life. The ancient unity of Christendom fell asunder into a mass of warring sects, which were so absorbed in their internecine feuds that they were hardly conscious of their loss of spiritual vision and social authority.
[…]
Christianity is not to be identified either with ethical idealism or with metaphysical intuition. It is a creative spiritual force, which has for its end nothing less than the recreation of humanity. The Church is no sect or human organization, but a new creation – the seed of the new order which is ultimately destined to transform the world. Such, at least, is the Catholic belief, and though the non-Catholic may deny the reality of this faith, and though the supernatural character of this life, he cannot shut his eyes to the fact that they have actually had a profound influence on the course of history and have been one of the main sources of the spiritual achievement of European civilization. For, notwithstanding the materialism and secularism that have always been present in our culture, and which today seem everywhere triumphant, that achievement has been perhaps the most remarkable that the world has ever known. Europe is not a true racial or geographical unity; it is, in its essence, a spiritual community, and even its vast material expansion in modern times would have been impossible without the moral force and spiritual inspiration that it owes ultimately to the Christian faith.
However secularized a civilization may become, it can never entirely escape from the burden of its spiritual inheritance. […]
For example, the Industrial Revolution, which appears at first sight one of the most materialistic aspects of Western civilization, would have been impossible without the moral earnestness and sense of duty that were generated by the Puritan ideal – an ideal far removed from that of Catholic Christianity, but one that owed its existence to a one-sided and sectarian interpretation of the Christian tradition.
And this is true also of the Renaissance and the humanist culture, in spite of the secularism and naturalism which seem so characteristic of them. The more one studies the origin of humanism the more one is brought to recognize the importance of an element which is not only spiritual, but definitely Christian. […] The Renaissance had its origin not only in the recovery of classical antiquity, but in the mystical humanism of St Frances and Dante. […]
Thus the disappearance of the Christian element of humanism has involved the loss of its vital quality. If we attempt to resuscitate it on a purely naturalistic foundation, we may get something like the humanism of Anatole France, but we shall certainly not recover the creative humanism of the Renaissance period. This is admitted by the protagonist of the new humanism, Professor Babbitt, who fully realizes that every culture is a spiritual order and that humanism is only possible if we throw over naturalism and return to spiritual principles. But, while he recognize that the very survival of Western civilization depends “on the appearance of leaders who have rediscovered in some form the truths of the inner life and repudiated the errors of naturalism,” he is unwilling to make a complete return to the metaphysical and religious foundations. He prefers a kind of spiritual positivism based on the accumulated moral wisdom of the great historic traditions – Greek, Buddhist, and Confucian. His desire to be “modern and individualistic and critical” causes him to shrink from committing himself absolutely to that which is eternal and universal.
Yet without such an affirmation, no true spiritual order is possible. Each of the great spiritual traditions to which he appeals rested on a metaphysical foundation, and if this is removed their moral order falls with it.
~Christopher Dawson, excerpt from "Christianity and the New Age"
