“There is something good in every culture. It would be astonishing were this not so; indeed, I would say it would be impossible because that would mean that that culture had been denuded utterly of any access to the good, that it was living in a barren wilderness of the spirit. Yet so many of our cultural critics seem to despise American culture or to have given up hope for it entirely. But if the culture were really beyond redemption, it would cast doubts on creation itself and its goodness.” (Jean Bethke Elshtain, Who Are We?: Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities)
It would be basically impressionistic for me to just echo what is already seen across social media as a way of discussing current events. A majority of my work in political science and philosophy has been in ancient and medieval thought, so to look at current events is sort of an application of theory for me. Yet, in a recent essay I wrote that is based on two very needed books, Jean Bethke Elshtain’s book entitled Who Are We?: Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities and George Weigel’s book, The Cube and the Cathedral
Why is there such a conversational disconnection between the increasingly diminishing Christian population that, in a qualified sense, believes that there is something real about the spirituality transmitted through the Old and New Testaments that is made alive in a person by the spiritual God, and a great many people that subscribe to the idea that each person’s subjective experience and feelings constitute the basis of what one will accept as truth and reality and good and beautiful? This is not merely a two-sided, us-them, simple matter. Instead, consider the possibility of what I have been thinking about for a while as irreducible complex categories. The idea here is that some kinds of qualities are nominal-scale, non-numeric, perhaps metaphysical characteristics that should not be put at odds with one another but best exist in a harmonious, complementary relationship where they temper one another. An example of this is the relationship between individualism and collectivism. One cannot say with credibility that humans are merely individuals or simply collective beings. We are both at the same time and both senses about the human person illuminate something about the nature of being a human.
“First, the new rationalism is at bottom an ethical relativism pure and simple. Its immanentism, its allegiance to scientific method as the sole criterion of truth, its theory of values as emergent in an evolutionary process, alike forbid it the affirmation of any absolute values (that is, as long as its adherents stay within their own system, which, being men and therefore by intrinsic necessity of reason also natural-law jurists, they frequently do not, but rather go on to talk of right, justice, equity, liberty, rationality, etc., investing these concepts with an absoluteness they could not possibly have within the system). Second as an ethical relativism, the new rationalism is vulnerable to all the criticisms that historically have been advanced against that ancient mode of thought, since the time when Socrates first argued against the Sophists and their dissolution of a knowable objective world of truth and value.” (John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition)
Given an irreducible complexity of human issues, human language demonstrably grows as words are invented to capture and clarify experiences. On the one hand, the writer of Ecclesiastes says that there is nothing new under the sun. Yet, Paul in Romans chapter one says that the way of the fallen world is to continually invent new ways to sin. I argue that the human faculty of creativity itself is not the problem, but the aim of and use of and heart behind creativity is what accounts for human contributions of evil in the world. Further, and more to the point, the words ‘human’ and ‘humanism’ have suffered a bad reputation in the Church as they have been strictly tied to the idea of secular humanism, caused by theological liberalism of the 16th through 19th centuries. Yet, I see that when Jesus raised himself from the dead and subsequently showed his pierced side and hands/wrists to his disciples, he revealed to us that the glorified state of being includes being human. Said another way, Jesus reveals to us what God has always aimed for humans to be like. Jesus as glorified, while at the same time fully God, continues to be fully human. It is this kind of humanity that all true sheep, true children of God will become changed to be like.
Therefore, I am concerned about the treatment I have seen of being Christian and being American. Where the writer of Hebrews says that Christians are citizens of a spiritual kingdom, the writer of Acts affirms that God has set limits on times and seasons and nations. While it is a blessing to have spiritual immortality (which is essentially the meaning of John 3:16), it is a blessing to be alive at any point in history and to inherit from one’s family and society one’s identity as finite human beings. If God wanted to eject humans from earth upon their being born-again, then God could. But God does not do this because there is much purpose in our continued lives as members of the human family. On the one hand, Jesus identifies that the Pharisees of his time were children not of God (spiritually) but of the Devil. Yet, Jesus also calls for feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting prisoners without respect to the faith of the person (Luke 4). John Courtney Murray captures these ideas in terms of incarnational humanism and eschatological humanism in his book, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition
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