1. Essays et al.: "The Violence of Modernity" by Fr. Stephen Freeman
Fr Stephen joined us for the seminar and Symposium on holiness back in January. It was clear to me then that he had a solid grasp on the shift to modernity—historically and philosophically—and the ensuing consequences. Earlier this month he posted a piece on modernity that demonstrates his insight. Here’s the opening lines:
The calm voice at the helm says, “Make it so…” and with it, the mantra of modernity is invoked. The philosophy that governs our culture is rooted in violence, the ability to make things happen and to control the outcome. It is a deeply factual belief. We can indeed make things happen, and, in a limited way, control their outcome. But we soon discover (and have proven it time and again) that our ability to control is quite limited.
He goes on to suggest another slogan for the modern project: “Changing the world.” According to Fr. Stephen, “Modernity is not about how to live rightly in the world, but about how to make the world itself live rightly. The difference could hardly be greater.” But, as Fr. Stephen continues, making the world live rightly is a never-ending project:
The ceaseless re-invention of the better world rarely takes stock of its own actions. That large amounts of any present ruination that are the result of the last push for progress is ignored. It is treated as nothing more than another set of problems to be fixed. As the fixes add up, a toxic culture begins to emerge: food that cannot be eaten; air that cannot be breathed; relationships that cannot be endured; safety that cannot be maintained, etc. As the toxicity rises, so the demand for ever more action and change grows, and, with it, the increase in violence (of all types). The amount of our human existence that now requires rather constant technological intervention is staggering.
All of this is done with no reference to God, because modernity is a secular concept. As such, Fr. Stephen argues,
that which constitutes “better” is, or can be, a shifting definition. In Soviet Russia it was one thing, in Nazi Germany another, in Consumer-Capitalist societies yet another still. Indeed, that which is “better” is often the subject of the political sphere. But there is no inherent content to the “better,” nor any inherent limits on the measures taken to achieve it. The pursuit of the better (“progress”) becomes its own morality.
Fr. Stephen’s conclusion is precisely how I’d want to define cultural renewal:
This picture of the modern world can, in the modern Christian mind, provoke an immediate response of wondering what can be done to change it. The difficult answer is to quit living as though modernity were true. Quit validating modernity’s questions. Do not ask, “How can we fix the world?” Instead, ask, “How should Christians live?” and give the outcome of history back to God.
Fr. Stephen ends with ten specific ways to begin living in a “non-modern” manner.
2. Books & Culture: "Conversion & Revolution: From the Underground Church to Freedom"
I just recently discovered the Czech priest and writer Thomáš Halík in his book Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us. I’ll tell you more about that book tomorrow. For today, I’ll just note that his autobiography is now available in English: From the Underground Church to Freedom.
“Most of the book,” Santiago Ramos says, “reads like a cross between a conversion story and a thriller: a tale of saints and books, state surveillance and spiritual reflections, underground journals and clandestine liturgies, secret words exchanged between dissidents in bus stops or whispered on Old World bridges at night.”
3. Bible & Fathers: Christians before Christ
This past weekend at our Eighth Day Seminar, a reference was made to a passage in which the second-century Church Father and apologist St Justin Martyr describes certain folks before Christ as Christians, i.e., those "who lived with the logos." Here’s the passage in his First Apology:
We have been taught that Christ is the Firstborn of God, and we have suggested above that He is the logos of whom every race of men and women were partakers. And they who lived with the logos are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates, and Heraclitus, and people like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Asarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without logos, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived with the logos. But for that reason He, through the power of logos and according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, was born a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent person will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said.
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