Omnes Sancti et Sanctæ Coreæ, orate pro nobis.

Now Blogging Afresh at Ad Orientem 西儒 - The Western Confucian



Monday, May 29, 2006

The Origins of the Modernist Attack on Christ's Divinity
The most scandalous doctrine of Christianity for moderns is the Faith's claim to being the one true religion. Folks who reject Christianity for this reason might be tempted to think that in doing so they are uniquely progressive or enlightened, when in reality they are only children of their times, following the Modernist, now Postmodernist, Zeitgeist.

Illustrating the absurdity of this position is this passage at the end of Peter Kreeft's Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley:
    Lewis: Everyone has some religion, some ultimate. The religion of modern society is egalitarianism. democracy, brotherhood, society itself.
    Huxley: You mean conformity.
    Lewis: Yes. Being accepted, being popular. Being one of the community. It's a radically new ideal in the modern West, according to Riesman in The Lonely Crowd, but it's just the modern version of a very ancient answer to the question of ultimate value, or the summum bonum. The ancients called it "honor," being respected by others for being superior in some way. We still want the same thing—respect and acceptance by others—but we get it not by being different but by being the same.
    Huxley: That point has been made by many observers of modern society: Neitzsche, Kierkegaard, Orwell, Ortega y Gasset... even a certain Aldous Huxley. What's the connection with modernist theology?
    Lewis: The modern world fears elitism, and elitist claims. Now Chrsitian ethics is not as elitist, as distinctive, as Christian theology. Love fits the egalitarian religion of the modern world much better than faith does, if you mean faith in the God of biblical revelation, not just faith in a vague force of your own imagination. Nearly everyone admits the claims of love, at least in principle if not in practice; but only believers admit the claims of faith.
    Huxley: True. Now how does this apply to Jesus?
    Lewis: Nearly everyone agrees with Jesus' ethical teachings, because they're very similar to those of Buddha and Lao-Tzu and the others...
    Huxley: So you admit he is one of the gurus!
    Lewis: As far as ethics is concerned, yes. But his claim to divinity is unique, and offensive. So if you can only classify Jesus with other ethical teachers and forget the claim to divinity, you're home free with humanism. You can classify Christ with the gurus and Christianity with world religions. You thus remove the odium of distinctiveness, the taint of elitism, the scandal of being right where others are wrong. You satisfy the demands of your god Egalitarianism.
Despite certain weaknesses I've already mentioned,* Prof. Kreeft gives us an entertaining and, towards the end, an enlightening book:
Rather than a dialog between ancient Western theism (Lewis), modern Western humanism (Kennedy), and ancient Eastern pantheism (Huxley) as it is billed to be, in reality it is a defense of orthodox Christianity against its modernist interpreters, whether they be humanists or relativists.

*See footnote for my post An Argument for Design.