In the following T. S. Eliot makes a fascinating claim about the relationship between Europe (perhaps the West) and Christianity. Would you grant any validity to what he holds?
Yet there is an aspect in which we can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people, from birth to the grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also its culture…. The dominant force in creating a common culture between peoples each of which has its distinct culture, is religion. Please do not, at this point, make a mistake in anticipating my meaning. This is not a religious talk, and I am not setting out to convert anybody. I am simply stating a fact. I am not so much concerned with the communion of Christian believers today; I am talking about the common tradition of Christianity which has made Europe what it is, and about the common cultural elements which this common Christianity has brought with it.
[. . .] It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe have—until recently—been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian Faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does, will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning. Only a Christian could have reproduced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian Faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes."
--Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
I tend to agree with him in this regard: the Western Society's distinguishing feature has been the focus on the individual as sufficiently the most important societal unit. I may of course be well off in my understanding, but I don't think we can point to a more distinguishing feature between the Western world and the other societies the world has known.
ReplyDeleteThis focus on the individual would not have been possible without the the Enlightenment, which would have been impossible without the Reformation, which would have, of course, been impossible without Christianity, (which draws on Judaism and the Greek thought). To that extent, I agree with Elliot's assessment that the laws of Europe are rooted in Christianity.
Whether it is possible for Western culture to continue where Christianity atrophies is much harder to speculate. I think that it is difficult to keep the focus on the individual without Christianity's moral absolutism, but if it were possible to keep this focus, I don't see why the Western world could not continue even in countries that abandon Christianity. I do hope that the trend (in Western Europe) of abandoning Christianity is reversed.
What do you think? Am I way off in my understanding of what makes the West different from the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Babylonians, or the Mayans?
I think we can cast a pretty wide net on this one and come back with an abundance of fish. For example, the legal tradition of family law and contract law that I've posted about of late are just two examples of how Christian thought has shaped the West.
ReplyDeleteThe same can be seen in aspects of economics and business, such as corporation law, the use of time, and the notion of fair trade. Many of our political, educational, and health care institutions have their practical and theoretical origins in medieval and Reformational practices. The presence of biblical figures and ideas are rampant throughout Western art, literarure, and music. (I'm often shocked how little biblical literacy some of my secular counterparts have in the arts and how much they miss as a result.) The case can also be made on fairly safe historical grounds that without Western theism and its stress on an orderly universe that can be rationally understood, the modern scientific enterprise would not have arisen.
I think you are right to see some aspects of individualism as arising out of the broadly Christian tradition, especially coming out of the confessional tradition as seen from Augustine to Puritan conversion narratives and the development of the early novel with its Christian mythos.
At the same time, one of the key tensions in the West is also Christian (broadly speaking) in orgin--that of the tension between an affirmation of the material, physical, and sacramental aspects of human existence with the spiritual and mystical aspects. Of course, the worst expressions of each Guinness has called the Catholic and Protestant distortions, but I don't think we can avoid that the tension has driven much of Western culture--I would argue even to some extent today in post-Christian forms.
Likewise, one can charge that a large number of modern ideologies are actually Christian heresies writ large--deism, romanticism, utopianism, Marxism, as well as forms of the cult of Progress and Hegelain dialectic.
It occurs to me that pretty central to some of our disagreements is the narrative that one offers of the history of the West. I tend to side with those Christian histories that see many of the developments of the Enlightenment as disappointing moves away from Christian worldviews to quasi- and post-Christian forms that still "live off" their Christian historic host. Which is not to say that I entirely reject the current forms or Christian incarnations of them.
The debate I narrated between two broad schools of current Baptist thought is a good example of this divide. The more "catholic" form of the Baptist Manifesto is sharply critical of Baptist forms that exalt individualism as being more Englightenment heresies than authentic Christian epistemologies.
I can't decide whether Eliot is correct, however, to see these post-Christian parasites as destined to die if the host dies, or if they will simply evolve into truly pagan counter-practices and counter-institutions. Some would say they already have (for example, the modern multi-versity).
I agree about the fact that our disagreements come out of our different interpretation of historical developments in Christian context.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure about the characteristics identified as the distinguishing characteristics of the West. The idea of material/spiritual dualism is (yes) important in Christian thought but not unique to Christianity or to the West, so it could not be thought of as a distinguishing characteristic, could it?
Legal tradition and family law the way we have them today I would still attribute to the understanding of individual (which we more or less agree comes out of Christian thought).
Corporation law, use of time: I don't know enough about the origins of the corporation law, but it seems to me that it is based on property rights, thus understanding of the individual. Use of time - what does that mean?
Fair trade - I don't think this is a distinguishing characteristic of the West. Free trade certainly is, but in common usage these two are almost used as antonyms, for some reason.
I do agree with you about the fact that it is difficult to precisely attribute the origins of parts of Western thought to either Christianity or a heresy, such as deism.
Sorry. My fault. I wasn't trying to answer what distinguishes the West, which you may be right to see as a focus on individualism. I was more interested in simply what our debt to the Christian tradition is.
ReplyDeleteAs to corporation law and use of time I mostly had in mind the rise of certain medieval practices in canon law and monastic practice.
I chose "fair trade" on purpose because it does seem to represent the struggle in Christian tradition to understand what that entails, albeit free or guided or fixed and so on.
As to history and individualism, keep in mind that I do prize individualism, and an important aspect of positive freedom for me is the way a society allows its members to pursue their lives and callings free from unnecessary coercion.
I would also concede that many forms of the Didactic Enlightenment, though they contained the seeds of their own destruction, were *in practice* still tied to Christian forms, beliefs, and practices. But these have often now evolved into extreme expressions of autonomy that violate a Christian vision of shalom.